Severe Weather, Wind, and Meteorology Collections
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://hdl.handle.net/10605/372857
Photograph: Dr. Tetsuya Theodore Fujita, developer of the F-Scale for measuring the strength of tornadoes.
Featured Collections:
Among the Southwest Collection’s holdings are numerous records relating to severe weather and meteorology, as well as the archives of the researchers who dedicated their lives to the study of wind power and other aspects of wind science, both at Texas Tech University and beyond. This page provides a snapshot of the Southwest Collection’s digitized collections, physical archival collections, and oral history interviews relating to these topics.
The F-Scale, used for measuring the strength of tornadoes, was developed by Dr. Tetsuya Theodore Fujita during his decades as a severe weather research. Dr. Fujita’s materials are housed at the Southwest Collection. An inventory of his work can be found here: Dr. Tetsuya Theodore "Ted" Fujita Papers, 1875-2003 and undated. Portions of Dr. Fujita’s materials have also been made available digitally.
In 1970, Lubbock, Texas, was devastated by an F-5 tornado. Numerous photographs of its aftermath can be found in our 1970 Lubbock Tornado Photograph Collection. The Southwest Collections’ archivists have also written about the event here and here
Texas Tech University is also home to the National Wind Institute (NWI). Many of its published reports and other archival material may be found here. The NWI was also featured in articles in Texas Tech University’s Daily Toreador newspaper here and here.
Other Digital Collections:
Other Archival Collections:
While not all of the Southwest Collection’s holdings have been digitized and made available online, their finding aids and inventories can be found on Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO) alongside finding aids from dozens of other archives throughout the state. In some cases, collections' contents have been summarized and made available in this guide.
The Southwest Collection owns many oral histories relating to severe weather and the study of wind power and wind energy. Some of those are:
Many more oral histories may be found among our oral history abstracts as well as among our oral history transcripts.