Figure 1 – First photograph of a tornado, taken by A.A. Adams in Anderson County, KS, from the Kansas Historical Society and in the public domain because it was taken and published before 1923.

My brief discussion of the supercell video yesterday got me wondering about what the first ever photograph of a tornado or twister was.  The obvious place to turn for this sort of information is the Kansas Historical Society’s website, and it didn’t disappoint.

The first photograph of a tornado, Figure 1, was taken on April 26, 1884 by fruit farmer and amateur photographer A.A. Adams in Anderson County Kansas.  Adams was standing twelve miles from the storm. He subsequently published his photograph both as a cabinet image and as a stereographic image, where he focused in on the storm.  Unfortunately for him, his image was rapidly eclipsed by a second image taken in South Dakota on August 28, 1884, although that images appears to have been doctored.

All of this, is perhaps needless-to-say, the precursor that spawned generations of storm chasers and, of course, the 1996 Jan De Bont film “Twister.” Who can forget the flying cows?