When I first went out to Wichita Falls in '84 I sat down to eat a burger at Wendy's. I heard a tornado siren go off. Had I not visited a friend of mine in Valley Falls, Kansas some two years prior I wouldn't have known what it was. We didn't have tornado horns out here back then. We mostly just ignored tornado warnings from the TV back then. Yea, yea, tornado...right.

So when the tornado warning went off...people started looking around...hunching down so as to be able to look up at the sky through the windows.

The tension got so thick you could have cut it with a knife. People were nervous...scared nervous. I thought that was weird. Then someone speaks out and says...First Monday of the month. There was an audible sigh of relief...the tension went away and the peeps went back to eating and chattering amongst themselves. Tornado warning sirens were tested on the first Monday of the month.

A strange occurrence, thought I. As time passed I figured out why that happened. They called it terrible Tuesday, April 10, 1979.

As I got to know people out there, I heard the horror stories of that nasty asssed tornado. Everybody who was there had a story. Some of them, the ones in close proximity, had some impressive stories of the disaster. I would drive around and see rows upon rows of house foundations...they built on pad out there.

Video documentary of Terrible Tuesday below. Check out the comments from people who were there. It was a life changing event.

Forty years on...they still speak of it as if it happened yesterday.