My drive to Lubbock took me through the open plains of northwest Texas, past spent cotton fields where I even saw a wild boar running along the highway. It was my first time in this stretch of country, and I was glad to take in some of the landscapes where the storm chasers I study have spent hours driving in search of tornado-producing storms. I find it helpful to walk—or in this case, drive—in the footsteps of the people I study, to get some sense of the spaces where they have spent time.
The exterior of TTU’s Southwest Collection and Special Collections Library. All photos by the author.
I was in Lubbock to spend two weeks in the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University (TTU), and examine two specific collections: the Tetsuya Theodore “Ted” Fujita Collection and the Wind Science and Engineering Research Center Collection. Fujita (1920–1998) was a pivotal severe storms researcher who created the Fujita-scale, or F-scale, used to rate the intensity of tornadoes.1 The Wind Science and Engineering Research Center (now the National Wind Institute) was formed at Texas Tech in 1970 to study wind damage after a massive tornado struck Lubbock that year. Both collections are rich resources, but in particular I was looking for interactions between Fujita and Great Plains residents who photographed storms as well as information about the Texas Tech storm chase team. I was successful on both counts, although the latter really came through in my last fifteen minutes of archival research, when I reached a folder full of handwritten notes from the first planning meeting of the TTU storm chase team.
One of the many works of public art that dot the TTU campus. This one is Headwaters, by Larry Kirkland (2002).
My daily walks to the archive took me past public artwork that punctuates the sand-colored brick of TTU’s buildings and even a dairy barn. The barn, which was built in 1926, was once a working dairy barn that now serves as a meeting location, as well as a reminder of TTU’s agricultural roots. The archive has fairly strict photography rules, so I can’t share images of my research there, but the reading room was a lovely place to work, spacious and full of natural light. More importantly, reference unit manager J. Weston Marshall and the entire Southwest Collection staff were unfailingly helpful.
The dairy barn at TTU was built in 1926. Originally a working dairy barn, today it serves as a meeting facility.
Though I have been laying low on archival trips this year to avoid catching COVID-19, I did do a little sightseeing on the Saturday between archival weeks. I headed to the American Windmill Museum, an astounding collection of artifacts and information about wind energy and the connection between windmills and railroads. I highly recommend the museum especially for any historian of technology and the environment.
Just a part of the remarkable collection of historic windmills at the American Windmill Museum in Lubbock.
When discussing my research, I sometimes feel guilty about how much fun I have researching storm chasers. So many of my colleagues reconstruct difficult histories, encountering historical traumas in archival form. I typically find myself reading about the adrenaline rush of catching a monster storm in the open plains or the frustrations of messy field data. This round of research, however, was more somber. Much of Fujita’s and the engineers’ research at TTU involved surveying damage wrought by tornadoes, and I spent two weeks paging through hundreds of photographs of devastated communities and newspaper accounts of deaths and injuries. It was a sobering reminder—similar to experiences longtime storm chasers have told me about—the same storms that create such awe-inspiring images can utterly devastate the people unfortunate enough to be in their paths.
Two snow days unexpectedly truncated my research, but I took advantage of the free afternoon on my last Friday to walk to the new memorial to the victims of the 1970 Lubbock tornado. The shape of the memorial is based on the tornado paths Fujita reconstructed. It was slightly surreal to see materials that I had read in the archive—survivors’ accounts, researcher surveys, even the last words of a little girl who died protecting her sister—transformed into a monument. Nonetheless, I was grateful for another chance to connect the history I study with the locations where the events took place, to connect the archive to the environment where people have lived through tornadoes—even if that environment has been utterly transformed.
A memorial to the victims of the 1970 Lubbock tornadoes. The design of the memorial is based in part on Tetsuya “Ted” Fujita’s research on the storms’ damage path.
- Last year, PBS released a documentary about Fujita called Mr. Tornado that gives an excellent overview of his life and career.