When I was a kid, I voraciously read every book that I could get my hands on. Especially books about weather. And most of all, books about tornadoes One of my favorites was the classic Tornadoes of the United States by Snowden Flora. Published in 1953, some of its ideas were outdated and incorrect, but we didn’t know that then.
One of the amazing stories in the book was that of the May 26, 1917 tornado that remained on the ground for an incredible 293 miles and seven hours and twenty minutes from near Louisiana, Missouri to Jennings County, Indiana. It would become known as the Mattoon tornado because of the destruction it wrought in that Illinois town.
It turns out that the tornado was actually a family of eight tornadoes. But that does not minimize the death and destruction. The tornadoes killed 101 people along their path.
In Mattoon, a total of 53 people were killed The twister intensified just before striking the town, cutting a two and one half mile swath of total destruction through the city that was nearly three blocks wide. Nearly every home and business in the northern half of Mattoon was destroyed. Debris from the tornado was found fifty miles away. At Mattoon, the twister did not have the characteristic funnel shape. Flora reported that it looked like two boiling masses of clouds that came together right before they hit the town.
The town of Charleston, Illinois was also hard hit. The tornado scored another direct hit, cutting a path 600 yards through the middle of the smaller town. A tornado of 38 people died in Charleston.
