Uploaded December 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Late April into early May in the Midwest was extremely active for tornadoes. April 30, 1967 in Northern Iowa and Southern Minnesota was yet another significant tornado outbreak occurrence only a week after a separate devastating outbreak transpired over Northern Illinois into West Michigan.
This Universal Newsreel chronicles only a small portion of the aftermath by the April 30, 1967 tornado outbreak. A gross over-estimate of tornado windspeed [i.e. 500 miles per hour] common to this era is mentioned by the narrator.
An excellent retrospective of the events on this day can be accessed here: weather.gov/media/mpx/April30-1967-MN-Tornadoes.pdf
Film © Universal Newsreel, 1967.
Late April into early May in the Midwest was extremely active for tornadoes. April 30, 1967 in Northern Iowa and Southern Minnesota was yet another significant tornado outbreak occurrence only a week after a separate devastating outbreak transpired over Northern Illinois into West Michigan.
This Universal Newsreel chronicles only a small portion of the aftermath by the April 30, 1967 tornado outbreak. A gross over-estimate of tornado windspeed [i.e. 500 miles per hour] common to this era is mentioned by the narrator.
An excellent retrospective of the events on this day can be accessed here: weather.gov/media/mpx/April30-1967-MN-Tornadoes.pdf
Film © Universal Newsreel, 1967.
![Tornado Alley... Wichita Falls, Texas 1964 [KAUZ-TV Documentary]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TOkB0lQlnwo/mqdefault.jpg "Tornado Alley... Wichita Falls, Texas 1964 [KAUZ-TV Documentary]
A destructive tornado was broadcast live on KAUZ television on April 3, 1964 as it moved through the northern portion of Wichita Falls, Texas. Seven lives were lost and over 100 people sustained serious injury. Sheppard Air Force Base, as well as the nearby residential neighborhood of Sunset Terrace sustained significant F5 damage.
Historically this tornado is often cited as the first ever broadcast live on television anywhere in the world. KAUZ-TV was indeed the first TV station to broadcast a tornado, but that event transpired on April 2, 1958 when a deadly F3 tornado struck the city. The news anchor in the 1964 broadcast makes mention of this misquotes the date as 1959. To my knowledge the 1958 live transmission was not preserved or saved. It was common practice in the early age of broadcast video to recycle and re-record over quadraplex videotape to save money. Fortunately six years later, engineers at KAUZ-TV did record and save the 1964 live broadcast, the bulk of it presented in this station documentary made soon after the tornado.
Additional film and news coverage of the April 3, 1964 Wichita Falls, Texas tornado is available via the Texas Archive of the Moving Image: https://texasarchive.org/2012_00678
Video © KAUZ-TV.")
