Moments in Time
The '53 Tornado: When Indian Legend Proved a Curse
By: John Young. Waco Tribune-Herald
It killed 114 people and tore
out Waco's heart. It will be
50 years ago
next Sunday, yet the pain still tears at
so many.
Were it not for tragedy in waves, some
of the ironies associated with
the 1953 Waco tornado would have been worth
a laugh for those who
survived.
On May 11, 1953, Ed Berry, president of
R.G. Dennis Department Store,
suggested that banker Carroll Sturgis come
over to talk business. Sturgis declined. "Looks
like it's going to storm."
At 4:36 p.m that evening, the giant store
disappeared into splinters,
and 22 lives were taken, Ed Berry among
them.
The day of the tornado, a newspaper reporter
called then-Baylor
University Department of Geology chairman
James W. Dixon and tried out
an Indian legend on him. The legend was
that the Waco Indians chose
this spot because, in a geologic recess,
it was tornado-proof.
Dixon scoffed and pulled a response out
of thin air. "It wouldn't take
but one tornado going right across Fifth
and Austin to prove that
wrong." A few hours later he was made prophetic.
The next day, the reporter, who had prayed
his way through the tornado
under a table at the old Williams Drug
at Fifth and Franklin, jokingly
accused Dixon of causing the tornado.
"I kind of denied that I had anything to
do with it," said Dixon, long retired and now living in Woodway.
Dixon explained to the reporter that Waco
isn't in a geologic recess,
at least the downtown part. It's on a limestone
outcropping — though
one carved for centuries by a river. Rather
than protecting anyone from
storms, the outcropping has a way of summoning
the elements as air
masses move along land, elevate and drop.
Rather than being immune from storms, the
outcropping up and down the
Interstate 35 corridor is somewhat of a
storm machine.
The other night when thunderstorms in the
middle of the night woke many
Waco residents, including me, the color-radar
picture on TV was one of
geology as much as meteorology.
Along the escarpment
The red band of commotion was doing what
it often does, laboring along
I-35 from Dallas to Austin. And why? Not
because that's where the cars
are.
It's because that's where the fault is,
the Balcones Escarpment, the
uplifted line of a great upheaval millions
of years ago. It's most
obvious in the limestone cliffs of Cameron
Park.
Baylor geologist emeritus O.T. Hayward,
whose trademark phrase is "geology is destiny," points
out that the uplift at the escarpment can
give a big lift to dense air masses that
bring rain with them.
"When the wind is saturated you get a sort
of rising chimney of warm
air right there at that scarp," Hayward
said. "It could extend to
35,000 feet — a soft mountain of
saturated air coming across the
county."
It is well established that the altitude
change at the escarpment helps
precipitate weather along the I-35 corridor,
which roughly follows the
escarpment.
James Dixon doesn't think geology had anything
to do with the 1953
tornado. But it is eerily illustrative
that the tornado came up along
the corridor from the south. And other
tornadoes, including two killer
twisters in Jarrell, have left their marks
roughly as the I-35 corridor
flows.
One thing is certain. Downtown Waco was
never to be spared by its
geology.
Winds of Change: Waco Tornado Tribune-Herald story
Back to Moments in Time