1913 Omaha Nebraska Tornado

       Mrs. Stafford was one of the few women rescuers who were at work in the streets before the electric power had been turned off, and while live wires were sputtering everywhere. She climbed through a broken window to care for a man and boy who had lain down beside the steps of their house when they saw the storm coming. She found the man pinned under a telephone pole, with his back broken. The boy was frantically calling for help. She assisted in pulling the man out on the sidewalk, and went on to help other sufferers.

     When Mrs. Stafford returned to her home in an hour she found it filled with scared and hysterical women. One of them had no clothes on, having been blown out of a bath tub. All the rest had gotten an hallucination that they, too, were nude, and they were grabbing quilts and remnants of garments to wrap around themselves. The woman who really had no clothes took Mrs. Stafford's coat, and disappeared.

     So many of the women helped themselves in their frenzy that Mrs. Stafford had scarcely enough clothes to keep warm, and had to wear her husband's coat. She cared for several children who were left without homes.

     When Mrs. Stafford missed her husband from the house, about 10, o'clock Sunday night, her strained nerves gave way, and for two hours she was insane and raving. When her husband returned from rescue work, she gradually recovered.

      It was a tornado that struck Omaha Easter Sunday night, and not a cyclone, according to Father William F. Rigge, of Creighton university, well-known for his astronomical achievements,

     The storm caught Father Rigge by surprise, and he has no data gathered while the storm was in progress. He says, however, that the barometric pressure, while of course low, was not record breaking, and that there have been at times equally low barometers in this city without consequent disastrous storms.

     "The normal barometer in this district," said Father Rigge, "is about 29, and sometimes may run as low as 28. I have known the barometer to go as low as 27.5. I understand that the lowest shown Sunday was 27.4.

"There is nothing in the superstition that a tornado returns. There is, however, a possibility that lightning will strike twice in the same place, in spite of the proverb to the contrary.

"Scientifically, a tornado is an extremely violent form of a cyclone. A cyclone is the term applied to any circular movement of the air, such as the regular progress across the country of the prevailing westerlies, or the passage of a widespread storm center. A tornado is also a rotary motion of the air, but is generally of only local effect."

     The Union Pacific self-recording barometer recorded a mark, of 27.9, at the hour of the storm Sunday afternoon, showing a dip of more than one inch since noon Saturday, when the glass was at 29, nearly normal.

     The approach of the storm might have been clearly foreseen, by a student of the glass, for the mercury dropped steadily all day with a decided plunge toward the bottom of the tube at 6 o'clock.

     The extreme lowness of the glass is indicated by the fact that the self-recording sheet is not printed to show a pressure of less than 28 inches, and the needle dropped below the printed form in order to register the storm.

     Following the tornado the glass rose steadily and nearly reached the 29-inch mark in less than eighteen hours.

     The glass showed a drop, preceding the snowstorm, but in no way approached the disastrous level of Sunday evening.

     The snow following the storm is an unusual feature of tornadoes, and the fact that the storm occurred during comparatively cold weather is another phenomenon not usually connected with such disturbances, say meteorological students.

That it is practically impossible for a weather forecaster to predict where a tornado will strike was the statement of Colonel L. A. Welsh of the Omaha weather bureau.

"We are able to state with positiveness that conditions are right for high and destructive winds," said Colonel Welsh, "but we can no more say where a twister will strike than we can tell where lightning will hit. The conditions Sunday showed a low barometer over Denver and extending around this section to the north. That was right for heavy winds. The condition of the barometer was not unusual."