Remembering the 1975 Omaha tornado
Posted By: Camila Orti
Photo by Bob Dunn, courtesy of the National Weather Service
Wednesday May 6 marks the 40th anniversary of a tornado that barreled through the heart of Omaha.
At the time, experts called it the most expensive tornado in United States history. But four decades later, meteorologists are still talking about the impact it had on what we know about tornadoes and the damage they can cause.
The twister that hit Omaha on the evening of May 6, 1975 killed three people and hurt more than 130.
“It was a knife-like edge between total destruction and everything was okay,” UNL meteorologist Ken Dewey said.
The EF4 tornado touched down southwest of Omaha around 4:30 and worked its way up through the center of the city, leaving behind a 10-mile-long path of destruction.
“I mean think about the time, peak traffic late afternoon and 72nd Street was clogged in places with traffic,” Dewey said.
Dewey drove up to Omaha the next day with a grad student to assist the National Weather Service and take photos. He says he vividly remembers walking through the rubble the next day.
“We saw big 18-wheelers on top of each other like they were toys,” Dewey recalls.
But he says it’s what weather experts learned from the storm that makes it so historic. By looking at the damage, scientists were able to discover new characteristics about tornadoes.
“So as this tornado destroyed a neighborhood, inside there were inner vortices and they would swirl around and annihilate anything that was underneath it,” Dewey said.
Nearly 300 homes were wiped out, a hospital was hit, and damage estimates were in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Dewey says the storm also helped debunk a myth many Nebraskans thought to be true:
“We’re safe in Lincoln because tornadoes don’t enter cities, well it entered Omaha,” Dewey said.
The tornado eventually lifted 30 minutes later in the Benson area.
Dewey says another thing people learned from this particular tornado unfortunately came from one of the fatalities. A woman lying flat on the bathroom floor of a restaurant died after getting trapped by debris and drowning. He says this is why people are taught to take cover by crouching instead.
