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Show Me…Nature’s Wrath

New Book Regales Readers With Tales Of Missouri’s Catastrophic Weather

By Linda Briggs-Harty

Call them twisters, cyclones or tornadoes (even shorten them to  “naders”) – by any name, they’re deadly, disastrous and, to some, demonic.

The windy beasts are but a fraction of the focus in author Don Corrigan’s new book, “Show Me…Nature’s Wrath,” just printed by St. Louis-based Reedy Press.

They loom large given the myths surrounding cyclones in the St. Louis area. Bottom line, says Corrigan in his first chapter, “Tornadoes inevitably capture the imagination of kids growing up in the Midwest.”

After all, author L. Frank Baum reportedly based the tornado in “The Wizard of Oz” on a whopper he’d covered as a Kansas City newspaperman.

Along with tornadoes, Corrigan describes all sorts of stand-out storms to hit Missouri, including hail, thunder, snow, ice and more.

Woeful weather conditions get a glimpse too — those boilers to beat the band and cold snaps imprinted in memory.

Corrigan’s book will be available at all area bookstores and online  at www.reedypress.com.

New Book A Conversation Piece

More anecdotal than scientific, “Show Me…Nature’s Wrath” is a conversation piece, said Corrigan.

“It’s meant to spur people’s stories. After reading it, they’ll say, I remember that storm,'” he said.

The idea for the book hit Corrigan when touring the state promoting his first nature book, “Show Me…Natural Wonders.”

People relayed their sense of wonder about Missouri’s weather, Corrigan said. A survey to the state’s meteorologists back in 2007 also showered him with subject matter.

“I realized you don’t have to travel outside our state to find freakish conditions,” he said. “We have it all right here —  continual drama due to the climate. I’ve always been in awe of this drama every time it happens.”

Corrigan is editor and co-publisher of the Webster-Kirkwood and South County Times newspapers, and a long-time professor of journalism at Webster University. He is also a former newspaper delivery boy. Many a day found young Corrigan on his bicycle, racing around his route trying to hurl papers before a squall from the West hit his Belleville, Ill., beat.

He’s never seen a tornado on the ground, though his college-age son saw one last year at Missouri State University.

His son asked why Corrigan didn’t join the storm chasers if he wanted to write about tornadoes and such.

“I’m a journalist, I told him. I can cover anything I want,” he laughed, admitting that writing about rather than chasing storms is more to his liking.

In characteristic fashion, Corrigan adopts a playful while still respectful tone in the book.

Case in point: recounting the 1881 Hopkins, Mo., “Sunday Destroyer,” Corrigan said that some blamed the beast of a storm “on the town’s most famous citizen (Grant Wallace), who believed in occult paractices and telepathy with spirits.”

Religious metaphors — both serious and silly – imbue Corrigan’s work.

“I used that kind of language because the Midwest is full of God-fearing people,” he said. “Those stricken by storms often were isolated and had to cling to faith when dealing with the scary situations.”

Imagine the “Godzilla-like” twister in 1896 that took out much of South St. Louis before leveling the east end of Eads Bridge and then wreaking havoc on East St. Louis. Fatalities: 135 in St. Louis, another 118 in outlying areas.

Then, there’s the 1925 “Tri-State” tornado starting in Ellington, Mo., and travelling through Illinois and Indiana, killing 695 people in its wake. That brute battled the terrain for two and half hours, Corrigan recounts.

In recent times, a happy ending of sorts occurred in the Ozarks when teen Matt Suter survived a 2006 cyclone after it flung him over 1,300 feet in the air.

Corrigan relays how the movie “Twister” made much of flying cows. Like the comedians cajoling Suter for wearing only boxer shorts in the storm, Corrigan points out, “That was no airborne bovine flying by in the storm — that was Matt Suter in his skivvies.”

Corrigan said he expected to turn up empty-handed when searching for lightning stories. No need to worry – lightning rod installers around the state provided him with ample ammo.

Here’s a horror tale for Guinness: in 2002, as people gathered under a tree near Springfield, Mo., during a funeral for the elderly Leon Carroll, lightning killed two mourners instantly and another two died later at a hospital.

Plastic handles and nylon tops of the umbrellas either melted or disintegrated, said the fire chief, who arrived on the scene.

2001 Hailstorm in Florissant

Remember the 2001 hailstorm? Corrigan recounts the now nearly forgotten price Florissant residents, in particular, paid. The city’s mayor, Robert Lowery, said softball-sized hailstones crushed the city. Just about every house in Florissant needed a new roof. Overall, the storm cost Midwesterners $2 billion in damages.

The snow Corrigan remembered as plentiful in his youth gets the spotlight toward the end of the book.

The “thundersnow” of 1982 prompted veteran TV weatherman Dave Murray to call it the “most quirky weather event of his years of forecasting in St. Louis.”

Some areas received 25 inches of white stuff. Since the National Weather Service put the official depth at 14 inches, that storm fell short of two other big snows, one in 1890 and another in 1912.

Corrigan said he knows people will remind him now of the storms he missed in the book. More storm stories may end up in a sequel to this  first spirited weather reminiscence, he said.

Other works on nature’s wrath promise plenty of amazing incidents, he said. “Here in the Midwest, remembering the weather is how we mark our lives.” (story reprinted from the Webster-Kirkwood Times

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