Conlen | |
---|---|
Coordinates: 36°14′07″N102°14′15″W / 36.23528°N 102.23750°W | |
Country | United States |
State | Texas |
County | Dallam |
Named for | Captain J. H. Conlen |
Elevation | 3,819 ft (1,164 m) |
Population (2000) | |
• Total | 69 |
Time zone | UTC-6 (Central (CST)) |
• Summer (DST) | UTC-5 (CDT) |
GNIS feature ID | 1379585 [1] |
Conlen is an unincorporated community in eastern Dallam County, Texas, United States. According to the Handbook of Texas, the community had a population of 69 in 2000.
In 1903, Conlen was established. It was named after Capt. J. H. Conlen, a Spanish-American War veteran who oversaw the construction of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, which traveled through the Texas counties of Sherman, Dallam, and Hartley and connected Liberal, Kansas, with Santa Rosa, New Mexico. Conlen made it through the terrible years of the Dust Bowl and afterward, with the installation of irrigation wells, restored its grain-based economy. In 1940, Conlen had 150 residents and four businesses; by 1948, that number had dropped to 62, and there were only three businesses. In 1990 and 2000, Conlen's population was recorded as 61 and 69, respectively. [2] It went down to 18 in 2017. [3]
On July 6, 1943, Boise City, Oklahoma, was mistakenly bombed by a U.S. Army Air Forces plane that had taken off from the nearby Dalhart Army Air Base. The pilot, sent on a training mission to drop explosives on a practice range near Conlen, got off course, mistook Boise City for the range, and dropped five bombs on the town. Although there was slight damage to buildings, nobody was injured, and the air raid was stopped after the town was blacked out by an alert power plant worker. [4] [5]
On May 18, 2010, an EF0 tornado struck Conlen. It was tracked over rural rangeland. [6] On May 30, 2021, four brief, EFU tornadoes struck Conlen. Multiple photos and videos from storm chasers, including National Weather Service employees, confirmed these tornadoes. They remained over open grassland and produced no damage. [7] [8] [9] [10]
"Big Tex" is a tourist attraction in Conlen. It is a 20-foot-tall statue of a cowboy with bow-legs. The statue dates back to the 1950s when it was the entrance to the Cowboy Cafe, a restaurant with a museum and gift shop located in Dalhart. The current owner of the statue is Elliot Crabtree. His father moved it from Dalhart to Conlen in the 1960s. [11]
Conlen is located at the intersection of U.S. Route 54 and Farm to Market Road 807, 19 mi (31 km) northeast of Dalhart and 11 mi (18 km) southwest of Stratford in eastern Dallam County. [3]
Conlen's high school girl's basketball team, which was sponsored by the Conlen Mercantile Company, was the winner of the state championship in 1934. [2] Today, the community is served by the Stratford Independent School District.
An anticyclonic tornado is a tornado which rotates in a clockwise direction in the Northern Hemisphere and a counterclockwise direction in the Southern Hemisphere. The term is a naming convention denoting the anomaly from normal rotation which is cyclonic in upwards of 98 percent of tornadoes. Many anticyclonic tornadoes are smaller and weaker than cyclonic tornadoes, forming from a different process, as either companion/satellite tornadoes or nonmesocyclonic tornadoes.
The tornado outbreak of March 28–31, 2007, also known as the Late-March 2007 tornado outbreak, was a tornado outbreak that took place across the central United States. It developed in the High Plains from South Dakota to central Texas on March 28, 2007, which produced most of the tornadoes. Several more tornadoes were reported the next three days before the system weakened on March 31. It affected western Nebraska, western Kansas, extreme eastern Colorado, and much of Oklahoma, and Texas. It was the second major outbreak of 2007, four weeks after an outbreak farther east. The outbreak produced 80 confirmed tornadoes, with five deaths and extensive damage being reported. In addition to the tornadoes, widespread hail as large as softballs and destructive straight-line winds as strong as 90 mph (140 km/h) were reported.
A satellite tornado is a tornado that revolves around a larger, primary tornado and interacts with the same mesocyclone. Satellite tornadoes occur apart from the primary tornado and are not considered subvortices; the primary tornado and satellite tornadoes are considered to be separate tornadoes. The cause of satellite tornadoes is not known. Such tornadoes are more often anticyclonic than are typical tornadoes and these pairs may be referred to as tornado couplets. Satellite tornadoes commonly occur in association with very powerful, large, and destructive tornadoes, indicative also of the strength and severity of the parent supercell thunderstorm.
Kerrick is an unincorporated community in Dallam County, Texas, United States. According to the Handbook of Texas, the community had a population of 60 in 2000.
The tornado outbreak sequence of May 5–10, 2015 was a six-day outbreak of tornado activity that affected the Great Plains of the United States in early May 2015. On May 6, strong tornadoes impacted the Oklahoma City area, along with rural parts of Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, South Dakota, and Nebraska. The outbreak coincided with major flooding, with large amounts of rain falling in parts of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. The National Weather Service forecast office in Norman, Oklahoma issued a "flash flood emergency" for Oklahoma City following record-breaking rainfall that occurred in the area that evening. The outbreak sequence resulted in five tornado-related deaths, along with two flood-related deaths. A total of 127 tornadoes were confirmed and rated as a result of this outbreak sequence. Damage from the outbreak was estimated at $1.5 billion.
The December 2015 North American storm complex, also known as Winter Storm Goliath, was a major storm complex that produced a tornado outbreak, a winter storm, a blizzard and an ice storm in areas ranging from the Southwestern United States to New England. Tornadoes struck the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex in Texas while several other states, especially Missouri, were affected by heavy rain and snow causing severe floods. As the system moved through the Great Lakes, heavy rain, ice pellets and heavy snow fell in the entire region. Wintry mix moved through southern Ontario and Quebec had significant snowfall on December 29. Almost 60 people were killed during the storm system's progression and aftermath, making it one of the deadliest such systems of 2015 in the United States.
The March 2019 North American blizzard was a powerful Colorado Low that produced up to two feet of snow in the plains and Midwest. Rapid snowmelt following the storm caused historic flooding, and some areas received hurricane-force wind gusts. Comparable to the 1993 Storm of the Century, the storm was labeled a bomb cyclone after barometric pressure readings dropped in excess of 24 mbar (0.71 inHg) over a 24-hour period. After the storm entered Colorado from its origination in Arizona, the pressure dropped more than 30 mbar (0.89 inHg) and rapidly intensified over the western High Plains. The severe storm set new all-time record low barometric pressure readings in Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico. The storm itself killed only one person in Colorado, but flooding caused by the storm killed at least 3, one in Iowa and at least two in Nebraska and left ~140,000 without power in Texas.
A significant severe weather and tornado outbreak affected multiple regions of the Eastern United States in mid-April 2019. Over the course of 40 hours, 75 tornadoes touched down. The outbreak produced numerous strong tornadoes throughout portions of the Deep South, while additional significant tornadoes occurred as far north as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The most significant tornado of the event was a long-tracked, high-end EF3 tornado that struck Alto, Texas and killed two people. Numerous weak tornadoes were also confirmed, along with numerous reports of hail and damaging straight line winds.
The tornado outbreak of January 10–11, 2020 was a two-day severe weather event stretching from the South-Central Plains eastward into the Southeast United States. An eastward-moving shortwave trough tracked across the continental United States through that two-day period, combining with abundant moisture, instability, and wind shear to promote the formation of a long-lived squall line. Hundreds of damaging wind reports were received, and 80 tornadoes occurred within this line, making it the third largest January tornado outbreak on record. Three tornadoes—an EF1 in eastern Texas, an EF2 in northern Louisiana, and an EF2 in western Alabama—led to a total of seven deaths, all in mobile homes. There were five other storm related deaths, including two due to icy roads in Lubbock, Texas, one due to drowning in Oklahoma, and one due to icy roads in Iowa. The system also brought a monthly record high temperature to Boston and Bridgeport. Extensive damage and several other injuries occurred as well. The severe weather event was notable in that it was forecast well in advance, with the Storm Prediction Center first highlighting the risk area a full week beforehand. Total damage from the event reached $1.1 billion according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.
A significant severe weather event impacted the South Central United States between October 20–22, 2019. Forecasters first identified the threat on October 16 as a large upper-level trough was expected to combine with an unstable atmosphere across Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas particularly. On the evening of October 20, discrete supercell thunderstorms developed across the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, contributing to several tornadoes. One of those tornadoes caused EF3 damage in the Dallas suburbs, becoming the costliest tornado event in Texas history, at $1.55 billion. A later squall line contributed to additional tornadoes and a widespread swath of damaging winds as the system tracked eastward.
On April 22, 2020, an outbreak of discrete supercell thunderstorms across portions of Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana led to widespread severe weather, including multiple strong tornadoes. Two people were killed by a high-end EF2 that struck the town of Madill, Oklahoma, and three more were killed by an EF3 wedge tornado that moved through Onalaska, Texas. Dozens of others were injured as well. The event came to fruition as a trough progressed eastward across the United States, interacting with a moist and unstable environment. Tornado activity continued into Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia overnight into the day on April 23. Isolated tornado activity also occurred during the overnight hours on April 21.
A tornado outbreak occurred on Saint Patrick's Day in the Deep South. Mississippi and Alabama were greatly affected, with numerous tornadoes being confirmed, including four that were rated EF2. Six people were injured by four different tornadoes across Alabama during the outbreak. A non-tornadic fatality also occurred due to a car crash near Natchez, Mississippi. The outbreak began the day before, with a couple tornadoes in Mississippi, and continued over the next two days. The storm moved eastward and affected portions of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia on March 18, spawning more tornadoes and causing wind damage before the storms pushed offshore that night. In total, 51 tornadoes were confirmed during the event, including 25 in Alabama, making it the sixth-largest tornado event in the state's history, and is sometimes locally referred to as the Saint Patrick's Day tornado outbreak of 2021. The same areas would be hit again by a more significant and destructive tornado outbreak sequence one week later.
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