Small town I grew up in just got devastated by a tornado

I was born in Germany (military brat) but we moved back to the US when I was 18 months old so I have no memory of that. When my dad left Active Duty he and my mom moved with me and my older brother back to the small Oklahoma town where my mom was born and raised. So those are my earliest memories of childhood.

The town is called Barnsdall and it's about 45 miles Northeast of Tulsa. The main industry in town is a wax factory that is part of the oil and gas industry. It's located in Osage County which is technically still an indian reservation, although most of the land has been sold off to non-indians in the 1920's (I actually didn't know it had been a reservation until I looked at an old road map when I was in junior high school.)

The town's biggest "claim to fame" is that it had the "world's only main street oil well" which was in Ripley's believe-it-or-not some time in the 1950's. It was also where some of the movie "August, Osage County" was filmed.

It's something of an exaggeration to say "I grew up there" - we moved out just after I started Kindergarten because my dad didn't want to raise his kids in a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere and my mom wanted out, too. We moved to the Washington DC area, and then when I was 10 Dad got a job with the National Park Service and we moved to Denver (1972.)

But even though we didn't live there, my grandparents and aunt/uncle/cousins did, and we usually went back every year to visit, so I've always thought of it as a kind of "hometown." I spent a lot of summers there over the years and watch the little town get smaller and smaller (for example, I clearly remember when there were THREE grocery stores in town. Now the closest thing to a "grocery store" is the Family Dollar that was just built maybe 10 years ago, and some convenience stores.)

Anyway, I just heard from my sister, apparently the town got slammed by a tornado last night.

1 dead after catastrophic tornado levels Barnsdall, Oklahoma | Fox Weather

1 person dead and at least 30 - 40 homes destroyed. That's a lot for a town that has a population that hovers around 1,000 people.

I'm pretty sure I don't know anybody who lives there now. My grandparents passed away in the early 1980's and my aunt and uncle moved away shortly thereafter. My mom passed away in January so I really don't have any living connection to the town anymore.

I was last there 10 years ago (April 2014) when my wife and I were on a camping trip and we stayed at a Corps of Engineers campground nearby.

But it's still awful to see the damage that the tornado did to a place I remember so well.

Very sad news.

I saw some of that footage on the weather channel. They said 80% of the town's structures were damaged. Really hard hit, amazing there was not more loss of life.

Tragic for sure but I guess if you live in tornado alley that?s a chance you take.

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Originally Posted by ray1970

Tragic for sure but I guess if you live in tornado alley that?s a chance you take.

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The interesting thing is that while most people think of Oklahoma as "tornado country", in that part of OK, called the Osage Hills, tornadoes are actually pretty rare. In all the time I spent there I only remember one tornado being anywhere close. Most of the tornado country is further South and West of Barnsdall on the flat plains.

It's kind of like people hear "Oklahoma" and they think dry, windswept plains. But the Osage country is actually rolling hills that are covered with a very thick, lush, dense deciduous forest.

To me, at least, "Oklahoma" has meant dense woods, big rivers and creeks, and thick, humid air.

Oh and chiggers. [Censor] If you know, you know.

Barnsdall was the kind of town where the primary activity on Friday and Saturday nights was for the kids to drive up and down main street past the Dairy Go Round (local ice cream shop.) And understand when I say "up and down main street" we are literally talking about maybe 5 blocks total. My mother's high school graduating class of 1955 had 12 students in it. And that was when Barnsdall was much bigger than it is now.

When we went through in 2014 Barnsdall (like so many other small towns in the middle of the US) was just a shell of what it had once been. About the only thing it has going for it is that it has become a "bedroom community" for the bigger cities nearby like Bartlesville (headquarters of the Phillips Petroleum company) and Pawhuska (if you watch the Food network or HGTV you may recognize the "Pioneer Woman" business that has become a staple of Pawhuska.)

That sucks.

My son is starting his Atmospheric Sciences with weather focus undergrad at CU next fall. His goal, probably at the MS or PhD level, is extreme weather event research and analysis to hopefully develop better forecasting and mitigation techniques. I am sure he will be in Norman for part of that journey.

Sorry to hear that. I was B&R in Enid, OK, and I still have family in Enid, Ponca City, Norman and Bixby, and wife & I are discussing moving to Stillwater area. Tornadoes are a fact of life there. I remember visiting Barnsdall as a pup, Dad wanted to see the oil well in the middle of the street. I may have the photo he took buried here somewhere.

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Originally Posted by .455_Hunter

That sucks.

My son is starting his Atmospheric Sciences with weather focus undergrad at CU next fall. His goal, probably at the MS or PhD level, is extreme weather event research and analysis to hopefully develop better forecasting and mitigation techniques. I am sure he will be in Norman for part of that journey.

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Forecasting has come a long way from watching livestock gather up before a storm centuries ago. Watching weather channel again, they were giving warnings ahead of the storm to towns in the path ‘real time’ with computer simulations of wind currents at 30,000 ft. Amazing technology!
On a side note, and being an aviation geek, here is a picture of a 1960 vintage USAF F-101 VooDoo Jet taken at Buckey in 1980. It’s marked Colorado State Univ. Severe Storm Research, The Gray Ghoast. Attachment 96541

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Originally Posted by flogger

Forecasting has come a long way from watching livestock gather up before a storm centuries ago. Watching weather channel again, they were giving warnings ahead of the storm to towns in the path ‘real time’ with computer simulations of wind currents at 30,000 ft. Amazing technology!
On a side note, and being an aviation geek, here is a picture of a 1960 vintage USAF F-101 VooDoo Jet taken at Buckey in 1980. It’s marked Colorado State Univ. Severe Storm Research, The Gray Ghoast. Attachment 96541

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Nice!

Barnsdall and Sulphur have been hit hard by storms recently. I've been here for 4 springs now and this is by far the most active in terms of severe weather. I've never been to Barnsdall but we go to Sulphur frequently for the awesome little flea market they have there. It's a shame to see the damage and destruction to towns already ravaged by time and a changing society. So many people impacted.

One of the things we like about Ada (pop about 18,000) so much is how vibrant it is. The downtown area was in the process of being completely renovated when we moved here 2 years ago. That work is mostly complete now and the entire downtown area is open for business. All the storefronts are actually occupied, unlike so many smaller towns across the country.

And you're right, Martinjmpr, about the countryside in this area. It's really beautiful with thick woods and rolling hills. I've lived all over the world and this is, hands down, my favorite place. Lately we've had a LOT of rain...11.5" from April 28th to May 5th. But it's been sunny and really nice the past 2 days and everything is incredibly green...the upside to all the rain.

We've become almost a Rockwell painting...we laugh when we go out and have coffee on the front porch and sit in our rockers, like the stereotypical retired couple. It's just so peaceful...like we're detached from the rest of the world here. Hell...we don't even lock our doors when we leave. I can't believe we lucked into this place.

It seems there is no end to these tragedies. Sorry to hear about this.

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Originally Posted by rondog

I remember visiting Barnsdall as a pup, Dad wanted to see the oil well in the middle of the street. I may have the photo he took buried here somewhere.

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There is a yellow brick house just to the left of the oil well as you look at it from the middle of town. I lived in that house from roughly 1965 to 1967.