Remembering the Anniversary of Historic Oklahoma Tornadoes! (credit: This Day in Weather History)

DISCUSSION: As we turn the clocks back to May 20th, 2013, several supercell thunderstorms developed during the early afternoon of May 20th along a dry line in central Oklahoma. One of these storms developed near Chickasha and rapidly intensified, producing a tornado which touched down at 2:56 PM CDT on the west side of Newcastle. The tornado became violent within minutes, then tracked east-northeastward across the city of Moore and parts of south Oklahoma City for about 40 minutes before finally dissipating near Lake Stanley Draper. The tornado caused catastrophic damage in these areas and was given a maximum rating of EF-5.  Thus, this was an incredibly scary for many people living across the state of Oklahoma on that late-Spring Oklahoma afternoon/evening. The tornado claimed 24 lives, injured many people, and caused several billions of dollars in damage across many areas within the state of Oklahoma.  To learn more about this historic tornado event, feel to click on the following link (http://www.weather.gov/oun/events-20130520).

To learn more about other past historic weather events from around the world, be sure to click here!

©2017 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz