The Night a Tornado Started Glowing

Wednesday, May 25, 1955. In the central plains of the United States, hundreds of communities in eastern Oklahoma were preparing for a long night of severe weather. Throughout the day, reports of strong, scattered thunderstorms were coming in from the west side of the state. Many communities sent out warnings, mentioning how these storms were some of the strongest they had ever encountered. This was all due to a low-pressure system over the Oklahoma Panhandle These conditions led to an unstable environment that began to produce isolated and violent supercell thunderstorms. There were reports of strong lightning, huge gusts of wind, and even strong tornadoes. Near Aberdeen, Oklahoma, for example, a large wedge tornado with wind speeds near 200 mph tore through the countryside, claiming two lives. This event was beginning to look like the major storm of the year. And warnings of this major storm continued to pour into the towns and cities in the eastern part of the state. One of these communities was the town of Blackwell, located in Kay County in northern Oklahoma. They had heard the warnings, they had heard the reports, but they didn't dwell too much on the information. It was May in Oklahoma, after all. Tornado threats come in practically every week. But unfortunately, this time would be different. Blackwell would encounter a tornado that night. This may sound like another tragic tornado story, and it is a very tragic tornado story, but there is much more to this tornado than your typical tornado. You see, according to eyewitnesses, something strange happened that night. Something that even to this day, experts cannot fully explain. A natural phenomenon occurred with the Blackwell tornado that has never really been seen since. Apparently, this tornado glowed in the dark. What was it that caused the Blackwell Supernatural Ghost Tornado? Who saw it? How did they describe it? And are there any similar events that might help prove that it actually occurred? Today, we are exploring the 1955 Blackwell, Oklahoma Glowing Ghost Tornado. It's now seven in the evening, and the residents of Blackwell can see distant flashes of lightning to their southwest. Many at this time had just eaten supper and were now preparing for bed. Meanwhile, just north of Oklahoma City, a small blip appeared on the Stillwater radar. This blip was, at the time, just a small, isolated thunderstorm. But by eight o'clock, the system had traveled significantly to the north and had developed into a large and dangerous supercell. Finally, at 926 p.m., a small tornado began to descend over rural Noble County, Oklahoma. Initially, this small tornado had gone unnoticed by the nearby communities. It was now dark out, so the tornado could only be seen during brief flashes of lightning. The tornado continued to head straight north as it crossed into Kay County. By this point, it had strengthened significantly into a destructive monster and directly in its path were the communities of Tonkaowa and Blackwell. Now, of course, since it was night, the tornado could not be seen. No one even knew it was coming. It could only be discerned by sound. What sound does a tornado make? Well, those who have encountered nocturnal tornadoes describe the sound as a mix between an approaching freight train and a jet engine that just gets louder and louder the closer it gets. Something similar to this. As the tornado approached Tonkaowa, the residents who were still awake could feel the rumble and hear the sound of something approaching. But fortunately for them, nothing would happen. The tornado just barely dodged the town to the east. But still, in its path was the larger community of Blackwell. And in Blackwell, something strange was occurring in the atmosphere. With the storm and the tornado still off in the distance, some community members noticed curious arcs of light being released from pointed surfaces. Outside on telephone poles, strange mini-beams of blue light were extending into the sky. Something very unusual was happening in the atmosphere, and it was causing a significant amount of St. Elmo's fire. A few moments later, people began to hear the roar of the approaching tornado. But something with the tornado had changed. Even though it was dark out, according to eyewitnesses, the tornado could actually be seen. Mrs. Sonjberg, located in the eastern part of Blackwell, looked out her living room window and saw the tornado. Incredibly, it was glowing in the dark. It was emitting light. She described it as continuous fork lightning in the shape of a snake's tongue ascending up into the tornado's funnel, giving the whole thing a bluish hue. This wasn't like a short burst of lightning. No, this was a constant blue glow. As she watched, the phantom tornado continuously got closer and closer to the town and her house. Before she knew it, it was right on top of her. She and her family quickly darted below ground as the powerful tornado tore through the eastern section of town. Homes were destroyed, cars and trees were flung high into the sky, and 20 people were killed. On top of the 20 fatalities, nearly 200 would suffer injuries. Here are some of the witnesses to the event. We have 16 apartments here. 12 of them are widows and there's only four married couples living there besides. Was anyone injured? Nobody was injured in that. We heard this here coming and it just sounded like they had just a freight train and we all got to the basement. Nobody was injured in it at all. Well, do most of the homes here have basements in black? Well, well, quite a few of them now. And I have a son that lives in the 400 block. His house completely torn up and he had a family of three and he and his wife and the baby just barely didn't make it to the basement when it demolished their house. It's from the glass plant on east. Everything east of that is level and the glass plant is gone. Those that are calling in, we only have one circuit and we can't answer all the telephone calls. That's why they wanted to be sure that everybody understood it. They could wait and some of these people will notify us. We will have it in tonight's papers and it'll be on tonight's news, a complete list of everybody injured. 400 homes were completely destroyed as well as 60 businesses, including important economic sites such as the Hazel Atlas glass plant. While the western part of the town was untouched, the eastern section near the river was wiped off the map. This newspaper showed the location of the fatalities. The tornado would later be given an F5 rating from Ted Fujita, the highest tornado rating possible with an estimated wind speed of over 260 miles per hour. It remains one of the most powerful and tragic tornadoes in Oklahoma's history. But let's get back to that strange blue glow. While there have been more powerful tornadoes, more tragic tornadoes in the state's history, none of them have ever had some sort of strange blue glow to them. This is something that is completely unknown in meteorology. So did it actually happen? Perhaps Mrs. Sonsberg was mistaken. Maybe she was just confused in the chaos. You might even think that she was making it up. Well, that's unlikely as she wasn't the only person to see this strange glowing effect. To the west of the funnel, a Mr. Montgomery saw a similar astonishing sight when he went out on his front porch. He described it as being extremely bright, so bright that it had to be obscured by clouds in order to get a proper view. He described the event like this. As the storm was directly east of me, the fire up near the top of the funnel looked like a child's Fourth of July pinwheel. There were rapidly rotating clouds passing in front of the top of the funnel. These clouds were illuminated only by the luminous band of light. The light would grow dim when these clouds were in front, and then it would grow bright again when I could see between the clouds. As near as I can explain, I would say that the light was the same color as an electric arc welder, but much brighter. The light was so intense that I had to look away when there were no clouds in front of it. The light in the clouds seemed to be turning at a rate similar to that of a beacon in a lighthouse. I mean that, that's bright. If you have to look away, it's like looking at the sun. You know when the clouds pass in front of the sun and you get that like silver disc effect. According to him, that was the only way he could observe this super bright blue light. But to further solidify the claim that this tornado glowed in the dark, we actually have yet another eyewitness. Lee Hunter, who was four miles north of Blackwell, also saw the glowing tornado after it destroyed the eastern section of Blackwell. He described the tornado as follows. The funnel from the cloud to the ground was lit up. It was a steady deep blue light, very bright. It had an orange color fire in the center. As it came along my field, it took a swath of about 100 yards wide. As it swung from left to right, it looked like a giant neon tube in the air or a fly man at a railroad crossing. As it swung along the ground level, the orange fire or electricity would gush out from the bottom of the funnel and the updraft would take it up into the air causing a terrific light. And then it was gone. Now it's interesting that he mentioned an orange light, an orange glow to this tornado. This is something that we'll talk about later. Shortly after Lee Hunter saw the tornado, it dissipated. Unfortunately, this same supercell thunderstorm would go on to produce another strong tornado that destroyed the city of Udaw, Kansas. One of the worst, most tragic tornado events in Kansas history. So we have three counts of this glowing ghost tornado, making it likely that something strange really did occur during the 1955 Blackwell tornado. By the way, all these various accounts come from a Journal of Meteorology article in 1957, in case you're looking for the source. The only problem, why hasn't a similar phenomenon been seen since? Seriously, there are so many storm chasers right now. People have been heavily documenting tornadoes since the late 90s. So surely someone would have seen something similar. Well, to be fair, most storm chasers don't really chase tornadoes in the dark because you can't see them. But still, people do chase nocturnal tornadoes. So have there been any other similar instances? Actually, kind of. And this time we have a photo. During the April 11, 1965 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak, probably the third worst tornado outbreak in the past 100 years. In fact, one could almost call it a super outbreak. But during that tornado outbreak, there were 18 F-4 tornadoes that took the lives of 266 individuals as they tore through sections of the Midwest and Southeast. Some of the more notable tornadoes include the Dunlap Indiana F-4, the Midway Indiana F-4, with this iconic photograph, and the Kokomo Indiana F-4. But another tornado, the Toledo, Ohio F-4, apparently also featured strange lights and a glowing funnel. Just like with Blackwell 10 years earlier, this tornado also occurred at night around 9 p.m. According to a 1966 Science Magazine article titled, Luminous Phenomena in Nocturnal Tornadoes, three different observers saw a strange glowing phenomenon associated with the Toledo, Ohio F-4, and one of them got a picture. Behold, a photo of a glowing tornado. Okay, what are we looking at here? Well, this photo was captured by a professional photographer named Jim Weyer. It was actually the second photo taken in a series of three photos at different angles. There's a lot of controversy around this photo, but it is legit. In fact, it's even been featured in several official National Weather Service documents. Some believe it's supposed to depict two twin funnels that are glowing in the dark right next to each other. Others believe that this central part is the actual tornado and that the sides are glowing. I am personally in this camp because if you look towards the base of the tornado, you kind of see what appears to be debris coming from the main central funnel. When you get dirt on the ground, that's what it kind of looks like to me. Now, Jim Weyer was a legit professional photographer. There's no way that he altered this photo, and clearly he did capture something strange. In fact, this photo was actually featured in Life Magazine. The question is, was the tornado actually glowing or was it just illuminated by lightning? To me, it looks like it's kind of glowing because why would lightning create this spotlight effect? I couldn't actually find a statement from Jim Weyer himself, but he wasn't the only person to see it that night. Another eyewitness of the glowing tornado, Marcella Benson, described the event like this. We thought we saw searchlights all around us, but there were no light beams shooting up to the clouds. The lights darting around in the clouds were sort of luminous and appeared to be more round in shape than anything else. Also, they were quite large. The lights were not as bright as a stroke of lightning, but they were above a dense layer of clouds and bluish white in color. We did not have much stroke lightning, and I do not recall hearing thunder. Our electricity was knocked out at 9.32 p.m., and that is when we saw one black funnel. The reason we could see it is because there was a slight glow coming from the sides of it. It came from due west. That last part of her statement, the reason we could see it is because there was a slight glow coming from the sides of it, sounds a lot like what Jim Weyer could have captured in his photograph. I mean, that's exactly what it looks like. The other thing is that she mentions searchlights. She mentions light beams going up into the sky, which also kind of looks like this. By the way, there are at least three more accounts that I could find describing luminous phenomenon during this event. Although in all the recorded interviews from the time of the event that I watched, none of them ever reported or mentioned a glowing funnel. Did you hear anything before it hit any big sound, or did you see any black funnel? I didn't see anything. We're inside the house, as I said, and I just see the front wall of the house coming at me, of course, when it let loose, but nothing outside. And as far as noise is concerned, we heard a roar. Interestingly, one kid did describe hearing a buzzing sound. Could this buzzing sound be some sort of electrical phenomenon? What happened? Well, I heard this buzzing noise and I said, what is it? And then the house blew over and I was buried in the wood and it fell on my chest. The whole house just caved right in on top of you? Yes. Did you see any black funnel that's usually associated with tornadoes? No. Just heard that big wind, is that it? Yeah. Well, thanks a lot, young fella. You're welcome. So this specific event definitely adds to the credibility of the Blackwell tornado and glowing tornadoes in general. It just very much bothers me that there really hasn't been anything seen since. And cameras, like I said, are everywhere today. I mean, maybe it really is just that rare of a phenomenon. Maybe there are too many LED lights all over the place now so we can't see it because it's just so faint. There is a lot of skeptics out there that don't believe the claims that these people truly saw a glowing tornado in the dark. But I want to believe. So how can such a phenomenon actually happen in nature? How can a tornado create a glowing effect? Well, let's get to the theories. The first theory is that these reported sightings from both Toledo and Blackwell were actually just power flashes. I'm sure many of you are familiar with power flashes, but these are bright blue explosions at the base of tornadoes. They occur when a tornado destroys some electrical infrastructure, such as a transformer or power lines. These are very common. They occur every few seconds when a tornado is tearing through an urban area. They are very brief, but they do sometimes feature several flickers that can, you know, maybe make the event seem more dramatic than it is. So was it a power flash? I don't think so. The next theory is static electricity. This one's interesting. Perhaps tornadoes that exhibit electrical phenomena are in a very rare and specific atmospheric condition, an atmospheric condition that is favorable for static electricity. You know, when it's like wintertime and super dry out and you're like super staticky all over because of just the atmosphere is very favorable for static electricity. Maybe that's what happened with these tornadoes. Maybe they're just in an environment with a lot of dust particles and those dust particles were smashing off of each other, building up a static charge that then created a glowing effect that was faint, but still there. The final theory is kind of connected to static electricity, and that is that glowing tornadoes are caused by St. Elmo's fire. This is when small pointy objects can ionize the air creating plasma. It is seen with ship masses out over water all the time. It's also seen with pointed church steeples. All you need is to have like a pointed sharp structure for it to occur. This theory is strengthened by the fact that there were many descriptions of St. Elmo's fire in Blackwell before the tornado occurred. So remember, tornado storms are massive, huge energy conductors. They have electrical charges everywhere. I mean lightning, hello, it's electric. Sometimes supercell thunderstorms are so electrically charged that you can get a strobe effect with lightning. This is when there's just lightning almost constantly flashing all around. In theory, when a tornado descends towards the ground, it can act like a preferred conducting path, which in turn creates a strong electrical field. For this reason, it's possible that maybe some of the debris in the tornado, if it's shaped in like a pointy way, could create St. Elmo's fire. Like what if, and I'm just speculating, I'm kind of going off script a little bit here, but like what if the tornado hit like a needle factory and there's needles flying all around the tornado? That sounds awful. That sounds awful. But just stay with me. All those needles can create St. Elmo's fire, giving it a glowing effect. This effect is usually blue, similar to what eyewitnesses claim to have seen. Wait, there was that glass factory that was destroyed. Wait a second. Hold on a second. The Hazel Atlas Glass Company was a major glass manufacturer that created bottles that was destroyed during the Blackwell, Oklahoma tornado. Wait a second. Can glass create St. Elmo's fire? Oh my word. It can. Wait, okay. This is, I'm just, I don't know why this is, I'm off the script, but think about it. All right. Glass can create St. Elmo's fire. You destroy a bottle, glass bottle company. Hello? Broken glass is sharp. And then it like glowed in the air. Boom. We just solved it. Maybe not. I don't know. Let me know what you think in the comments. By the way, moving back on script, St. Elmo's fire can also create a red glowing effect. Like check out this video right here. See how there's red flashing as well with this St. Elmo's fire. Perhaps that's why some people noticed a flame effect. We know vortices can create electrical discharges. Dust devils have done it. Blowing snow has done it. And believe it or not, we have even seen it on Mars with dust devils. We've even recorded the sound of these little electrical charges. Take a listen. Now some people believe that maybe ball lighting was involved. That's a little bit more far-fetched. Although I will say that the possibility of ball lighting seems to be more and more likely as we see more and more footage. Maybe it was headlights. The Rolling Fork Mississippi EF4 tornado featured something that looked kind of like headlights, but that really wouldn't light up the entire tornado. One way you could actually 100% create a glowing tornado is if your tornado has radioactive debris in it. Highly radioactive particles do emit a blue glow because they're so radioactive that they tear apart atmospheric particles and molecules that then give off a blue light. This blue glow can be seen in mushroom clouds. Check it out. That is definitely not what happened in Blackwell. So we can scratch that theory off the list. So what is my personal theory? I'm thinking that it was a rare case of St. Elmo's fire. That glass factory idea just, I don't know, it kind of makes sense to me. I'm thinking that a glowing luminous phenomenon does occur very rarely in tornadoes. And I'm thinking that we're probably going to see some legit footage of it soon. But yes, that's just my theory. What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below. If you're a member, be sure to check out a new members only video where I try to find lost ancient tornado scars in forests via Google Earth. If you're interested in that, you should become a member. But thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time.