The April 12, 1945 Tornado Outbreak

During the afternoon of April 12, 1945, the nation was in shock over the sudden death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As many residents of eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas undoubtedly huddled by their radios listening to the reports of the President’s death, they likely were unaware of the gathering storm clouds outside. In those days, the very mention of the word “tornado” was not allowed by the government, as this might cause undue panic.

The weather turned violent to the west just after 3 pm, when a twister killed 8 on the southeast side of Oklahoma City near Tinker AFB. The storms would unleash their fury on eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas over the next 6 hours.

A total of 7 tornadoes have been documented in the area that makes up the present County Warning and Forecast Area of the National Weather Service office in Tulsa, OK. As is typically the case with tornado events from the past, the actual number may have been considerably higher. There may have been other tornadoes that were unaccounted for due to a lack of damage reports. It is also possible that the longer tracked tornadoes could have been comprised of a "family" of tornadoes, or multiple tornadoes from the same thunderstorm.

The destruction was not limited to our area. Other significant tornadoes occurred farther east and northeast into Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois. This outbreak was responsible for 129 fatalities in all, with hundreds of injuries.

The tornado tracks as depicted in this story map are largely derived from the publication "Significant Tornadoes 1680-1991 - A Chronology and Analysis of Events" by Thomas P. Grazulis, and supplemented, when possible, from various archived newspaper sources. As such, the tracks depicted here are by no means exactly as they occurred, but are presented as a best estimate of where they occurred.

Back then, upper air networks that are relied upon today for analysis and forecasting were basically non-existent, and surface observation networks were considerably more sparse. By incorporating the surface weather data into atmospheric models, the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory has estimated parameters such as temperature, pressure, winds, moisture, solar radiation and clouds, from the surface to the top of the atmosphere throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

The maps presented here are from Storm Prediction Center's Violent Tornado Webpage which, using the 20th Century Re-analysis, has re-created surface and upper air charts for many tornado events through the early 20th century. There is considerable uncertainty in these charts, however they do provide a "first guess" estimate of the 3-d structure of the atmosphere on a given day.

A re-created surface analysis from 2:30 PM CST on April 12, 1945 shows a pattern that typically supports severe weather in Oklahoma and Arkansas. One very interesting aspect is the strongly backed surface winds across eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas, which would have significantly enhanced low level wind shear.

Source: bangladeshtornadoes.org

Several other photos from Antlers are shown here, but the exact location is not known.

The Antlers tornado was one of several deadly twisters that struck eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas during the afternoon and evening of April 12, 1945. In all, 103 area residents lost their lives that day, with scores of others injured, and many lives undoubtedly changed forever. Below we have listed the rest of the tornadoes from that day.