St. Louis proper. Fire added to the destruction and as the streets were littered with rubbish, the Fire Department was helpless."

Turpin's Tornado Extinguisher

In the aftermath of the St. Louis storm, news reports of new anti-tornado technology — mostly theoretical — began cropping up. For example:

* A Protective Wall. In June 1896, David Wechsler of the San Francisco Chronicle proposed "mitigating the force of tornadoes by means of artificial walls." Because "modern lofty steel-frame" buildings often withstood tornadic winds, Wechsler reasoned, perhaps it would be "possibly practicable to build great windbreakers to the west of big cities that should forever guarantee them from such dire misfortune as that which overtook St. Louis; in other words to wall modern cities as a matter of protection against the weather as old-timeThe poles would work like lightning rods and redirect the overcharged electricity produced by violent storms.

Supercell Thunderstorms

Eventually, as more information was gathered on tornadoes, the attempts to prevent them waned. Governmental groups turned their attention to severe weather forecasting.

In 1951, the Severe Weather Warning Center was created under the aegis of the U.S. Air Force. Other weather analysis offices followed. The advent of the computer and the Doppler radar network enabled military and civilian forecasters to make more precise predictions.

It's possible that with new technology, humans will re-engage in the battle against tornadoes. But for now, says Katja Friedrich, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, "you cannot modify the weather or tornadoes to be less devastating and