El Reno, Oklahoma

Everything El Reno is known for

3 songs mention this city 0 artists from here

Music in El Reno

Songs About El Reno

El Reno
Merle Travis
80%
"Song about El Reno"
Sister
Cross Canadian Ragweed
49%
"He blew my drums that summer night in El Reno"
canadian river waltx
R.W. Hampton
25%

Artists From El Reno

No artists from El Reno in the database yet.

Rivers & Roads in Song near El Reno

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near El Reno.

U.S. Route 66 19 songs Highway I 40 20 songs Canadian River 7 songs Interstate 44 5 songs Cimarron River 8 songs Interstate 35 43 songs

History of El Reno

The ethics of storm chasing RoadyGoat

2013

Just south of El Reno, Oklahoma, on May 31, 2013, the widest tornado ever recorded ground across the prairie, about 2.6 miles wide at its peak. It turned suddenly, ballooned in seconds, and hid inside heavy rain. Among the eight people killed were Tim Samaras, 55, a respected researcher who founded the TWISTEX project, his 24-year-old son Paul, and teammate Carl Young, 45. They were the first scientific storm researchers ever killed by a tornado. Their work was careful; the storm was not. That day is why chasers argue about ethics out here. Crowded roads can block the people fleeing for their lives. Bumper-to-bumper "chaser convergence" slows first responders. And cameras pointed at someone's worst moment cross a line. The good ones leave room, leave fast, and remember that a storm is never owed an audience.

Mobile radar trucks RoadyGoat

2013

Out here near El Reno, Oklahoma, on May 31, 2013, the widest tornado ever recorded tore across the open country, roughly 2.6 miles wide at its peak. The reason we know just how monstrous it was comes down to radar trucks. Fixed radar towers sit far away, and the beam climbs higher the farther it travels, so it misses the violent winds spinning near the ground. So researchers built mobile radar, dishes bolted onto trucks, the Doppler on Wheels among them, that drive close to the storm to sample those low-level winds directly. Near El Reno, mobile radar clocked winds well over 200 mph inside small, fast sub-vortices whipping around the main funnel. That kind of close, fast scanning is how scientists pinpoint a tornado's true width and ferocity, turning a chaotic gray wall into hard numbers we can study.

The first tornado on radar RoadyGoat

1953

On May 24, 1973, a violent tornado tore into Union City, Oklahoma, killing two people. But this storm changed history in another way. Just down the road, researchers at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman pointed an experimental Doppler radar at the funnel and watched the whole thing, start to finish. It was the first tornado ever observed by Doppler. In the data they spotted a tight knot of spinning wind, a fingerprint later named the tornado vortex signature, the very pattern Doppler radars still hunt for today. The idea of catching a twister on a screen went back further, to April 9, 1953, when a technician near Champaign, Illinois filmed a curling hook echo, the first hook on record. Two flat prairie towns, twenty years apart, and the reason your phone buzzes with a warning before the sky turns.

10.5 mi away

Things to Do in El Reno

historical 24.8 mi away
Paseo Arts District

Oklahoma City's walkable arts neighborhood. Galleries studios and the best First Friday in the state.

Everything Near El Reno

42 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore El Reno on the Map
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