1980 :: Deadly F-3 Tornado

In April of 1980, my late husband and I were living near Rices Crossing, a little community northeast of Austin. I was working as Adminstrative Assistant to the Executive Director of the Texas Energy & Natural Resources Advisory Council (TENRAC). Our offices were in the Executive Office Building at 411 West 13th Street near the State Capitol.

As I drove home on the afternoon of the 7th of that month -- which was almost exactly one year after the Wichita Falls tornados -- I saw a funnel cloud form and touch down. I did not have a video camera in those days, and my first thought was to get home and get my camera. So within 5 minutes, I found myself standing on my front porch in Rices Crossing taking pictures of what I thought was a tornado with my Canon AE-1. Below is one of the images I captured.

In 1980 we did not have digital cameras, or even one-hour developing, so I had to call around to find someone to develop the film in a hurry. I contacted a local news station, and was apparently the only person who contacted them saying I had captured images of that F-3 tornado. Jim Giles and Steve Cope wound up using 35 of my photos in a special report on KTVV-36 in Austin. The local news reported on this tornado as follows . . .

Austin American Statesman. Tuesday morning, April 8, 1980. Front Page. Twister hits 3 counties; 1 dead in Round Rock.

A tornado-packing storm system ripped through Williamson, Travis and Bastrop counties late Monday afternoon, killing one person, injuring seven others and leaving a trail of damage for 25 miles. The only fatality occurred in Round Rock, where the storm developed. The most serious property damage was in the communities of Lund and Manda, where the Travis County Emergency Unit estimated that 32 homes were destroyed or damaged in a six-mile-long, half-mile-wide area. . . . Killed when a tornado dropped out of the sky at Round Rock was Magin Ortega, 52, of 1112 West Side . . . He died when the two-story house at 12 Galloping Road in which he was visiting collapsed from the force of the storm . . . a white wooden church in Lund was picked up and moved 15 feet off its foundation . . .

• The storm formed near Sam Bass Road just west of Interstate 35 on the northwest side of Round Rock about 5 p.m. and moved southeastward across the city. Described by witnesses as being "real tall and skinny," the funnel dipped up and down as it cut a swath across town.

• It touched down first in the northwest portion of the city, doing damage to Murffy's Nursery and Ranch Supply at 901 Sam Bass Road, owned by Round Rock City Councilman Mike Robinson. . . .

• The storm then demolished the house where Ortega was killed . . .

• From there the storm moved southeastward, damaging the Round Rock Auto Supply at 308 North Mays, and then damaging two structures on the Old Gattis School Road in southeast Round Rock. . . .

• The storm continued to move southeastward across Travis County, striking the Manda and Lund areas before hitting the Davis Addition on the east side of Elgin. . . .

The violence spun itself out in exactly one hour, said Dave Owens, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service office in Austin. Weather observers tracked the exact path of the storm on radar, picking it up at 5 p.m. west of Interstate 35 at Round Rock, and watching it dissipate on the radar screen at 6 p.m. at a point 5.2 miles northeast of Elgin.

Except when spawned in hurricanes, Texas tornadoes tend to move from southwest to northeast, but even in this respect, Monday's twister was freakish, since it moved from the west-northwest to the southeast. . . .