On the morning of May 11, 1970 , skies darkened over Lubbock and winds began to rise, setting the stage for the kind of storm many in Tornado Alley pray never comes their way.
By late that Monday evening, dozens of tornadoes had touched down across the Great Plains and Midwest. In Lubbock, two tornadoes struck that evening: the first, relatively small, around 8:45 p.m., roughly an hour before, as described by the National Weather Service, “ the most massive tornado touched down over the heart of the city of Lubbock.”
As it tore through downtown — then a bustling hub of commerce and daily life — the Lubbock tornado killed 26 people, injured more than 1,500, and caused over $100 million in damage. The destruction was so severe that it led meteorologists to rethink how tornadoes were measured, ultimately resulting in the creation of the Fujita Scale one year later, which rates tornadoes by intensity and damage…