Multimedia Presentations for the
Red River Valley Tornado Outbreak
of April 10, 1979

A multimedia briefing was created by NWS coop student Alex Lamers, who works at the NWS Norman forecast office, and is a meteorology student at the University of Oklahoma. Alex discusses the weather setup on April 10, 1979 as well as several of the most significant tornadoes that occurred that day. He also gives a summary of the event as well as some weather safety lessons that were learned from that event. The briefing has a run time of 13 minutes, 1 second.

The multimedia presentation is available here.

Following the deadly Red River Valley tornado outbreak, the National Weather Service, in partnership with FEMA and the American Red Cross, produced a documentary called "Terrible Tuesday" that chronicled the events in Wichita Falls on April 10, 1979. The video includes survivor accounts and safety information. It was produced in 1984 and has a run time of 19 minutes, 30 seconds.

The Terrible Tuesday video can be viewed via the NWS Norman YouTube Channel.

On Tuesday, April 10, 1979, the city of Wichita Falls, Texas was struck by a large tornado. The members of the Wichita County Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), operating as SKYWARN Storm Spotters, made the first report of the storm to the National Weather Service, and are credited with saving many lives in the city.

During the afternoon of April 10, Danny Roberts, WB5ORE, from Nocona, Texas, happened to be listening to the Wichita County ARES repeater and, as the storms began to develop southwest of Wichita Falls, he began to record the net on his small cassette recorder simply by laying the mike next to his radio speaker. His recording, just over 74 minutes in length, continued throughout the net until all of the power went off in Wichita Falls.

The recording can be accessed via a Windows Media audio file (.wma).

The symbol (SK) by the individual's name indicates the person is a Silent Key.