This is probably one of the stranger places i’ve visited since moving to Texas. El Reno is a small town about 20 miles West of Oklahoma City. The only reason i’ve heard of it is due it suffering one of the most violent tornado’s in recorded history. In May 2013 a complex of thunderstorms developed over Central Oklahoma, quickly one of these storms began exhibiting rapid rotation and a wall cloud (signs of tornadic activity). In the early evening a tornado touched down which would go down in history as one of the most powerful ever seen.
This is the countryside outside of El Reno. The Tornado tore directly through here during it’s path of destruction. At it’s peak the storm reached a record breaking width of 2.6 miles, and windspeeds of almost 300mph. This was also a multiple vortexes tornado, meaning there were at times more than on tornado on the ground. Due to the Fujita scale ranking tornado’s strength on the damage they do this Tornado would only be ranked officialy as an EF3 on the 1-5 scale, as it predominantly stayed over rural areas. But obviously if it had gone over a town it would probably be one of the deadliest and costliest natural disasters in world history.Whilst the tornado avoided the town itself not all were that lucky, in total there were 8 fatalities. Four storm chasers were killed due to the rapid growth and volatility of the storm. 3 of them are remembered here on the Twistex Memorial. Two of the guys on here regularly featured on the programme Storm Chasers, which followed meteorologists in the field as they tracked down tornadoes. It was quite eerie to come and visit this place even on a calm summer’s afternoon. If you’re reading this and get chance i would highly recommend having a look at some of the images taken of the tornado in 2013. There are some breathtaking photos online which capture the incredible size and ferocity of the tornado.
Howdy, my name’s Matt. I'm originally from England but now live here in the Great State of Texas. Since moving here I thought it would be fun to try something new and enter the world of photo blogging.
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2 thoughts on “El Reno, Oklahoma”
Very interesting article Matt. Just checked out the photos of the 2013 El Reno tornado… must have been terrifying to have been caught up in it.
Lone Star Law 
Very interesting article Matt. Just checked out the photos of the 2013 El Reno tornado… must have been terrifying to have been caught up in it.
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Indeed thankful it was a nice peaceful morning when we went to visit lol
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