1966 Topeka Storm Thunderhead

1966 Topeka Storm Thunderhead

In high school in Mt. Vernon, Iowa I was fascinated with thunderstorms, setting up my tripod and time exposures of storms floating by.   I had so little luck at this that at one point my parents begged me to quit wasting film.  But I kept at it.  When we moved to the Kansas City, Kansas in the spring of 1966, I kept trying.  The Kansas storms seemed to have more juice, more kick than the Iowa storms.

The evening of June 8, 1966 a strong storm was going by just north of town.  I talked a friend into taking my out in his car and I set up my camera and tripod on a hill.   The thunderhead was a monster, perhaps the most beautiful cloud I've ever seen.  I shot a succession of shots as the storm moved by.

 The first picture - this one - is my favorite thunderhead picture.  As can be seen, there were multiple lightning strikes, painting the clouds structure.   We could hear the bellows of the thunderbolts.

As the cloud sailed by, it was losing some punch.  It also may be the associated clouds helped to obscure the thunderhead.

By this time the cloud was over Missouri.

When I got home, my mom was in a panic because there had been a tornado in that cloud and this was years before cell phones - she didn't know where I was.  Until recently, I thought these pictures were taken when the tornado was hitting but then some spoil-sport pointed out the storm hit at dusk and these pictures were later.   Also, my grasp of geography is a bit weak - the city of Topeka is not north of Kansas City.

This storm was a real killer and still described online.  It hit Topeka, Kansas, killing 17 people and injuring 500.   It destroyed 800 homes and cost an estimated 200 million dollars, among the most destructive storms on record.  It was rated an F5 tornado.

I was aware even in Iowa that the best storms seemed to have considerable punch.   It's a shame such a big beautiful storm could do such damage.