The idea that a tornado could take the roof clean off sounds like an exaggeration — but there’s ample evidence that’s exactly what happened here. These photos were from the 1950s at the latest — 1920s at the earliest — all of which are on the early side when it comes to rural infrastructure in this part of the world. Put yourself in this farm family’s shoes: It’s raining like hell, you’ve got no TV, no telephone, no radio (and even if you did, there was no ’emergency broadcast system’, no NOAA weather radio, and even a little rain interferes with them all), you’re huddled around a candle in your dirt cellar, and you hear the rumbling — like a train, but the nearest tracks are 10 miles away. You’ve got nothing you can do but wait it out, and hope it doesn’t come too close of the house. They’re lucky it was just the top of the barn — as you can see in the last photo, they were able to put things back together, hopefully without too much loss.
