DONATION UNITES THE WORK OF TWO TORNADO PIONEERS

Written by Cory Chandler

Texas Tech Adds Fujita Research to Collection as Community Remembers Tornado

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: May 11, 2005
CONTACT: Cory Chandler, cory.chandler@ttu.edu

LUBBOCK – Thirty-five years after a tornado devastated this West Texas community, Texas Tech University has further cemented its place as a premier center for wind studies in the United States by formally accepting a collection of research and documents compiled by the late tornado pioneer Dr. Theodore Fujita.

Fujita is known best for creating the Fujita Scale to classify tornados by intensity. He defined and assigned wind speeds to six wind categories ranging from F1 to F5, with F5 being the most destructive.

The gift has established the university as the single largest repository of wind-related documents in the world, said Chad Morris, associate director for Texas Tech’s Wind Science and Engineering Research Center.

Dr. Kaz Fujita, son of Ted Fujita, formally presented the collection. The documents will be housed in Texas Tech’s Southwest Collection /Special Collections Library.

The Wind Science and Engineering Research Center is currently involved in a project to improve and enhance the Fujita Scale. The center is an interdisciplinary research program that probes the potential benefits of wind as well as ways to best mitigate its detrimental effects.

The donation helped commemorate the 35th anniversary of the tornado that struck Lubbock on May 11, 1970, killing 26 people and causing millions of dollars in damages. The research center was founded in response to that disaster.

CONTACT: Chad Morris, Wind Science and Engineering Research Center, Texas Tech University, (806) 742-3479 Ext. 321, or chad.morris@ttu.edu.