A series of six or more F1 and F2, (lightweight) tornadoes blustered through Kearney on Thursday evening, May 29, 2008, doing considerable damage to the power infrastructure, and producing a few amazing sights, but leaving most of the city intact and no reported injuries. The local press seem to have missed the fact that this recent tornado event was a centennial reenactment of Kearney’s last significant encounter with the dreaded storms. On June 4th, 1908, the earlier storm system also sent several twisters raging through the town. One hundred years ago, those twisters destroyed several homes and killed a half-dozen people. The quirky behavior of the fearsome “cyclones” in 1908 were even featured in the August 1, 1908 issue of Scientific American Magazine. The 1908 aftermath was recorded by photo-documentarian, Solomon Butcher, and other local photographers.
I haven’t seen any good snapshots of funnel clouds from 2008, but several people reported seeing twisters before running for cover. The photos below are from a Scientific American article (8-1-1908). They were taken by Edward Bricker, but it is no surprise to to see that George Frank, the genius promoter of Kearney, is mentioned in this article. The photo captions say “One of the day’s seven tornadoes” and “The tornado picked up a castor from a table, unscrewed the top, took off the turntable, and drove the central rod into a tree.”
I didn’t take photos of the storm, or the more spectacular aftermath scenes, but lots of other people documented the the Gehry like distortion of a metal building at the fairgrounds, the stacked automobiles, the tipped train cars, and the exposed appartment on 39th street. I did take a series of photos of tree damage and the clean-up crew that quickly cleared the streets on Saturday. See a slideshow, or click a photo at right.
