Lubbock Tornado on Anniversary of Waco Twister

The first reported sighting of the May 11, 1970 tornado came from an off-duty policeman, who spotted a funnel cloud at 8:10 p.m. three miles east of the Lubbock city limits.

What the cop actually saw turned out to be the baby brother of the main or primary tornado that would wreak such havoc on the West Texas community of 140,000 – the biggest town between Fort Worth and El Paso at that time. The Lubbock twister of 1970 remains to this day the westernmost F5 tornado on record in the continental United States.

History is full of odd coincidences but none stranger than the freakish weather fact that the only two cyclones to ever hit the heart of a Texas city each happened on May 17. Seventeen years to the day after downtown Waco fell victim to a rare F5 twister, a storm packing the same powerful punch delivered a crushing blow to Lubbock.

The smaller opening-act did its share of damage to the Hub City. Just for example, 13 concrete beams weighing 545 tons each were blown off a highway overpass under construction.

The following is an official account of the second act: “The primary F5 tornado touched down in southwestern Lubbock at 9:35 p.m. and over the next half hour carved an 8.5 mile path of devastation encompassing roughly a quarter of the city with the twister lifting near the Lubbock Municipal Airport shortly after 10 pm.” The report went on to add that the size of the funnel on the ground varied from a mile and a half wide at the start to a fourth of a mile just before it returned to the black cloud that brought it to the place residents regarded as the “crown jewel” of the South Plains.

On the tornado’s fast trip through the downtown business district, the drastic change in air pressure shattered 80 percent of the plate glass windows in the high-rise towers and street-level storefronts. But that was not all. The steel frame of the 20-story Great Plains Life Building was grotesquely twisted out of shape by whirling winds that rendered three of the four elevators inoperable.

As it exited the city center, the tornado appeared to be headed straight for Lubbock’s pride and joy – Texas Tech. But at the last possible instant, it unexpectedly weakened and changed course causing the campus to sustain only a glancing blow and escape with surprisingly minor damage.

But in the blink of an eye the tornado reintensified in strength and resumed its northward path. Homes in the vicinity of the country club suffered varying degrees of damage with some leveled to the foundation.

The last stop was the local airport, where many of the 119 aircraft were turned into twisted hunks of metal. Having done its worst, the merciless tornado left Lubbock to mourn its dead and begin the long and expensive process of rebuilding the city.

The cost in irreplaceable lives was, of course, the highest. Compared to the staggering 114 fatalities suffered by Waco in 1953, only an insensitive observer might have thought Lubbock “got off light” with “just” 26. But hopefully no one ever said that out loud.

Why were the death tolls so different in the two cities? Calamity came calling on Waco in the middle of a busy workday. Most of the fatalities occurred in the downtown business district where defenseless victims were caught in their offices or out on the street. Photos of the unimaginable destruction bear an eerie resemblance to images of bombed out German cities during the Second World War.

In Lubbock, on the other hand, the multi-vortex tornado waited until after dark when downtown streets were practically deserted. The great majority of people were safe at home with their families when the natural disaster descended upon their community.

Fifty-four years have come and gone and the Lubbock tornado is still the costliest in American history with total damages of $1.98 billion in 2023 dollars. According to the National Weather Service and Red Cross 1,713 family dwellings were damaged including 460 that could not be made fit for human habitation; 600 apartment units were left unlivable; 250 businesses were either badly damaged or destroyed; eight public schools, including a large high school, needed extensive repair before reopening; and 10,000 personal vehicles kept repair shops working around the clock for months or went straight to the junkyard.

The residential neighborhood hardest hit was in the poorest part of town, the Guadalupe barrio. And, as is so often the case, it was the last one to be rebuilt. Today the victims of their respective tragedies are remembered with memorial parks in both Lubbock and Waco. While it is fitting to mourn the dead, it is even more important to always remember them.

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