Wednesday May 26th 1976

[dfaulkner]

Just before 5:30pm on this day in 1976 a tornado touched down near the intersection of Marsh & Walnut Hill Lanes. It travelled East/Northeast damaging 187 homes along it's path. A great deal of the damage was to houses along Bonham St., Royal Ridge Dr., Merrell Rd., Better Rd., & Best Dr. It destroyed First Alliance Church Merrell & Midway. Several units at The Village Park Apartments at Royal Lane & The North Dallas Tollway were damaged as were numerous vehicles & several businesses. After several minutes the tornado dissipated near the intersection of Hillcrest & Pemberton.

In all this, no one was seriously injured.

One of the reasons for this may have been that Michael Selden (doing Afternoon Drive on KVIL) could see the tornado from their studio windows. He stopped the music & reported on the tornado as it made it's way across North Dallas.

There were other warnings; Civil Defense sirens were sounding, Dallas County's team of Civil Defense "tornado watchers" were getting the word out. Al Moeller of the National Weather Service spoke highly of them in the following day's Dallas Times Herald & to be sure, many other DFW Radio & TV outlets were covering the tornado.

But Michael Selden's coverage of it as he watched from the windows at KVIL is what always come to mind.
I'm not sure how much mention he got for doing that. I remember Channel 5 interviewing him & reporting on it. But that's the only one that I recall.

Coincidentally, May 26th falls on Wednesday this year as it did in 1976.

But the weather should be a lot more pleasant...

 

[LibertyNT]

Thats pretty interesting stuff

 

[idiggraves]

Well, thankfully, most of the stations in Dallas now are voice tracked- even in middays- so in the event that happens again I'm sure we'll all be safe...


Really cool info, nonetheless. Thanks!

 

[MikeShannon914]

Wow, I hadn't thought about this in years! I had the date in my mind somewhere around June 9, but you're right...I just found all the writeups in the old Dallas Morning News archives. I remember pooling my money a few days later (I was 11 at the time) and buying a Midland Weatheradio for $14.95 at Burstein-Applebee at Town East. (My old 1972 model Realistic Weatheradio bit the dust several years earlier.)

One article said it was the first tornado outbreak in Dallas proper since the horrible April, 1957 one.

And it figures that Selden was on top of things...when it came to jocks, he was full service!!

 

[Lancer]

Well, thankfully, most of the stations in Dallas now are voice tracked- even in middays- so in the event that happens again I'm sure we'll all be safe...

Really cool info, nonetheless. Thanks!

Exactly the reason why I subscribe to a service that emails my cell with all DFW severe weather notifications. Then I switch over to 'BAP to see what Brad Barton says. Most of the other stations are useless for any kind of weather notifications.

 

[dfaulkner]

Well, thankfully, most of the stations in Dallas now are voice tracked- even in middays- so in the event that happens again I'm sure we'll all be safe...

Really cool info, nonetheless. Thanks!

Exactly the reason why I subscribe to a service that emails my cell with all DFW severe weather notifications. Then I switch over to 'BAP to see what Brad Barton says. Most of the other stations are useless for any kind of weather notifications.

I'm listening to 820 or 96.7 to see what Brad says anytime the weather's bad.

 

[arnoldevns]

Oh I remember it soo very well. It's my brother's birthday. We had finished with the party for all the kids a few hours earlier and he was working on a model he got as a present when we heard the storm. A short time later, the sky got dark as night and the power went out. My dad grabbed his weather radio and listened to some of the radio broadcasts too. (maybe KVIL) He knew the tornado was heading in our general direction. He got me, my mother, brother and sister in our downstairs bathroom with the dog. He kept listening to the weather radio - and stood in the front doorway to our home with the door open. He turned and yelled "come quick" and I ran up to him. It was then that I saw for the first and only time in my life a tornado. It was probably a half mile away from our home and passing from the west to the northeast. I watched as debris kicked up and the massive rotating cloud passed by. It was terrifying, thrilling and beautiful all at the same time. I'll never ever forget it. We saw the damage after the storm and it was just so very scary and sad. The weather reports, whether on the NOAA weather radio or broadcast radio, were invaluable. The internet and TV would have been useless in this case.

 

[Steve Eberhart]

What I remember about that day was turning on KVIL and Selden had Jack Schell in the chopper after the tornado passed, describing the damage from his view in the air...They went wall to wall with the coverage for what seemed a couple of hours...

I recall Mike tossing it to Jack in the chopper at about 10 till 7...by the time Jack was finished with his report it was 10 after 7 and Johnny Michaels was on the air in the control room.

 

[Nik]

Exactly the reason why I subscribe to a service that emails my cell with all DFW severe weather notifications. Then I switch over to 'BAP to see what Brad Barton says. Most of the other stations are useless for any kind of weather notifications.

I do too, but the flood watch alerts get annoying when they come in every three minutes...

 

[El Gato Malo]

Wow, I hadn't thought about this in years! I had the date in my mind somewhere around June 9, but you're right...I just found all the writeups in the old Dallas Morning News archives. I remember pooling my money a few days later (I was 11 at the time) and buying a Midland Weatheradio for $14.95 at Burstein-Applebee at Town East. (My old 1972 model Realistic Weatheradio bit the dust several years earlier.)

One article said it was the first tornado outbreak in Dallas proper since the horrible April, 1957 one.

And it figures that Selden was on top of things...when it came to jocks, he was full service!!

Are you referring to the mall on Seminary Drive in Ft. Worth? Because if you are, it was called Seminary South Shopping Center back then.

 

[MikeShannon914]

No, I meant Town East. If you're in FW, it's WAAAAY the other side of everything, out in Mesquite! I do remember Seminary South well. Somewhere along the way, it was Hulen Fashion Mall and Fort Worth Town Center. KBUY was once located in the basement there, and that's where it was when Hal Jay first went to work in DFW radio there in 1972~. Was there a Burstein-Applebee at Seminary South? I only remember Six Flags Mall, Valley View and Town East. Will have to dig out one of my old catalogs of theirs to find the location list.

 

[poerboy]

I, too, remember that day well. I was on Stemmons Freeway traveling North at about Northwest Highway when it passed over the freeway. Traffic was dead stopped. And then it hailed.

 

[Lancer]

Exactly the reason why I subscribe to a service that emails my cell with all DFW severe weather notifications. Then I switch over to 'BAP to see what Brad Barton says. Most of the other stations are useless for any kind of weather notifications.

I do too, but the flood watch alerts get annoying when they come in every three minutes...

Yeah I noticed that also - but I can filter those out at the WeatherUSA website if I want. I wanted to be able to monitor Arkansas also for my family up there, so I pay $4 a month for a service that I can customize by county and warning type. It even rings my phone & texts (in addition to the emails) for any warnings in Dallas County, or Garland County in Arkansas. Pretty cool.

 

[dfaulkner]

Well, thankfully, most of the stations in Dallas now are voice tracked- even in middays- so in the event that happens again I'm sure we'll all be safe...

Really cool info, nonetheless. Thanks!

Exactly the reason why I subscribe to a service that emails my cell with all DFW severe weather notifications. Then I switch over to 'BAP to see what Brad Barton says. Most of the other stations are useless for any kind of weather notifications.

I'm listening to 820 or 96.7 to see what Brad says anytime the weather's bad.

What I wrote there didn't convey what I intended. For many years, whenever the weather turns ugly, I've tuned to: KRLD then, now WBAP, to see what Brad Barton is saying.

 

[El Gato Malo]

No, I meant Town East. If you're in FW, it's WAAAAY the other side of everything, out in Mesquite! I do remember Seminary South well. Somewhere along the way, it was Hulen Fashion Mall and Fort Worth Town Center. KBUY was once located in the basement there, and that's where it was when Hal Jay first went to work in DFW radio there in 1972~. Was there a Burstein-Applebee at Seminary South? I only remember Six Flags Mall, Valley View and Town East. Will have to dig out one of my old catalogs of theirs to find the location list.

I was a DJ at Spanish-language KBUY-FM, later KESS-FM, from 73-79. Amazingly, back in the day, the lesser station was on FM and the primo one was on AM, in this case "Constant Country" KBUY-AM. Our studios were in the basement of Seminary South with picture windows where passers-by could stop and watch us work. It was pretty cool. I do not remember Hal Jay, so I don't know if he was already gone when I got there. I remember Jack Dillon, Terry Jones, Randy Ryder, Brad something, John Wallis, the engineer Schumacher, the News Director Sam Thompson (?) and the GM Jerry something-or-other. On the Spanish-language side Chuck Brooks was in sales, as was Dennis Roberts. The GM was Marcos Rodriguez, who later bought the station from John Walton. Daaaaaang, radio was fun back then! Fort Worth will forever live in my heart.