Repair the Ruskin Heights Tornado Memorial!

Kansas City Star, 2010

The evening of May 20, 1957, a F-5 tornado struck the south Kansas City suburb of Ruskin Heights. I was a five year-old boy growing up in the area and was both terrified and fascinated by the events of that evening. My mother drove us through "ground zero" the next day. As a result, that very day I knew I wanted to be a meteorologist. The tornado also played a role in me meeting my future wife, Kathleen! In addition to I, Dennis Smith (formerly of The Weather Channel) and the outstanding storm researcher Les Lemon, who passed away several years ago, also were inspired to become meteorologists as a result of the tornado. 

Meteorologists privately comment that F-5 tornadoes are so powerful they "clean up afterward."
Here you see the home utterly blown away with only the commode left after the tornado.

With the terrible loss of life, a memorial to the tornado victims was erected the next year. It was placed directly in the tornado's path across from the brand new high school the tornado also destroyed. More than 2,000 attended the ceremony to dedicate the memorial and I remember it well. 

When I came to Kansas City on my 2010 book tour, the Kansas City Star posed me in front of the memorial as that tornado is covered in the beginning of Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather. 

Two months ago in September, the Ruskin Heights Tornado Memorial was struck by a car and severely damaged. According to the Martin City Telegram there is a difference of opinion as to whether the memorial should be repaired. Because of the loss of life and the historic nature of that storm, I believe the answer to repairing the monument is an unqualified “yes" as the history involves more than most people know. I'd like to tell that story. 

 

Again, the Ruskin Heights Tornado of May 20, 1957, killed 44 and injured 531. While Kansas City was stunned by the loss of life, it was impossible to know then that it was highly likely more than 100 lives were saved by the Weather Bureau’s tornado forecast and warning messages that afternoon and evening. It was the first time the government’s* fledgling tornado forecast enterprise successfully worked for a major tornado. 

 

But, those warning messages were never supposed to happen. The meteorologist who issued them – the late Joe Audsley – thought he would be fired the next day. 

Joe Audsley 

Forecasts of tornadoes had been issued by the Bureau’s recently established National Severe Storms Forecast Center for four years. But --  incredible as it seems in 2024 -- the Weather Bureau forbade itself from issuing tornado warnings because it was afraid “panic would kill more people than the tornado.” 

So, the Ruskin Heights Tornado is historic not just because of the devastation in Martin City, Hickman Mills, Ruskin and scattered points to the northeast, but also because it was the first time the government's Weather Bureau issued what we would call today a tornado warning. Here are two of those messages (screen captures from Warnings). In the first message look how Joe tried to to avoid using the banished word, "tornado." A "funnel cloud touching the ground" is the very definition of a tornado; keeping in mind it was okay to forecast a tornado. 

As the tornado moved into Kansas City's suburbs, reports of the "tornado" were coming in at an accelerating rate. Joe and Bob Babb (who was working the forecast desk while Joe was handling the radar and the warnings) finally just starting using the "t-word."

There was near universal praise for what Joe did that night and, whether the top management of the Weather Bureau wanted to be or not, the Bureau was now in the tornado warning business. 

After the events of that night in 1957, most major tornadoes across the United States would be preceded by warnings that would allow people to get to their basements or take other measures to save their lives. The death rate – the number of tornado deaths per capita – would eventually drop by an incredible 95 percent!

 

The Memorial was last refurbished in 2007 for the 50^th commemoration of the event. I believe it should be rebuilt and enhanced with language memorializing both the terrible loss of life as well as citing the scientific accomplishment of the first Weather Bureau tornado warnings. 

 

From the Telegram, the local government is studying whether to rebuild the memorial. I will happily make a significant donation to get things started. 

 

 

* It is worth noting that WKY-TV in Oklahoma City (now KFOR-TV) issued the first-ever tornado warning in 1952.