Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 14, 1990 TAG: 9003143089
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/2 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The funnel clouds plowed through Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas on Tuesday, killing two people, leaving two missing, injuring at least 22 and wrecking scores of houses.
One tornado ripped a 100-mile path across southeastern Kansas. It lingered in Hesston, Kan., a town of 3,000 people, long enough to damage 75 to 100 houses. A 6-year-old boy was killed when a chimney and fireplace crashed into a basement where he and six other people were huddled. His 12-year-old brother was injured. A woman and her teen-age son were missing today.
The same tornado killed an elderly woman near Goessel, Kan., 10 miles from Hesston, and damaged 19 farmhouses in surrounding Marion County, said Sheriff Ed Davies.
At a church in the north Texas town of Elbert, officials monitoring the gubernatorial primary vote took a breather Tuesday to watch a tornado.
"We just stood in the rain and watched it go by," said election judge Bernard Gilmore. The storm caused no major damage.
At least nine Iowa counties were visited by twisters, including one that destroyed a firehouse, 10 homes and three businesses in Worthington, near Dubuque. Fifty residents were given shelter by the Red Cross.
Tornadoes wrecked part of Lawrence, Neb., injuring three people, and derailing 24 empty Burlington Northern Railroad cars near Grand Island. Authorities declared a disaster area at Sutton, Neb., after a twister ruptured a tank of dangerous anhydrous ammonia.
Thunderstorms brought flood warnings early today to Oklahoma, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois. Walnut-sized hail fell at Groom, Texas.
Meanwhile, up to 8 inches of snow fell late Tuesday in the Nebraska Panhandle. Snow also blanketed parts of Montana, Idaho, Arizona and Colorado.
The warm front brought balmy weather to much of the country east of the Rockies. The National Weather Service said the heat came from a high-pressure system pumping Gulf of Mexico air northward.
The warmth was expected to last until Thursday, then "it'll just get a little cooler," said meteorologist Robert McElhearn.
A full week before the first day of spring, summer came to New York City. The high of 85 was 38 degrees above normal and 15 degrees higher than the 1929 record.
Lenny and Robin Wayne, tourists from Los Angeles, took a few spins around the Rockefeller Center ice skating rink and left early.
"It's too hot to ice skate," Wayne said.
"It makes you want to fall on the ice," his wife said.
Record highs for the date were registered in Atlantic City, N.J., where it was 86; Baltimore 85; Charlotte, N.C., 86; Chicago 71; Cleveland, 76; Concord, N.H., 69; Detroit 73; Indianapolis 75; Montgomery, Ala., 85; Norfolk, Va., 84; Philadelphia 84; Providence, R.I., 77; Raleigh-Durham, N.C. 88; Richmond, Va., 89; Rochester, Minn., 63, and Washington, D.C., 87.
by CNB