Word: twister
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...million worth of damage. Weather Bureau meteorologists were as surprised as the victims. They had predicted storms confidently enough, but their maps showed no sign of the ominous low pressure areas that usually accompany tornadoes. An official warning was not issued until half an hour after the first twister hit the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, a delay that was a devastating reminder of how little is known about the monstrous forces that produce the whirling storms...
...still cleaning up its storm damage, another tornado started spinning in Washington, D.C. But this one was manmade, and it whirled with promise. Generated in a laboratory at Catholic University by Chinese-born Dr. Chieh-Chein Chang, head of the university's space sciences department, the indoor twister probably came closer to simulating a real tornado than any other artificial storm ever produced. By carefully analyzing its characteristics, Chang hopes to learn how to build structures that will better withstand the deadly twisters and perhaps point the way toward more accurate prediction and even prevention of tornadoes...
Vaulting northeast, the twister spun down on the industrial suburb of Flowood, overturning six railroad boxcars, smashing factories and claiming ten lives; one dead worker was left hanging on a fence. At Forkville, Joe Bullock, a Democratic candidate for Congress from Mississippi's Fourth District, was killed when his car was blown off the road. Finally, after a parting punch at Pea Ridge, the twister petered out under the sullen, sultry cumulonimbus that had spawned it. At week's end, with the aroma of pine tar from uprooted trees still heavy in the air, and rescuers still digging...
...with jesting surrealistic damnation in The Apple, Playwright Jack Gelber now fires a stream of satirical tracer bullets into contemporary marriage, careerism, the worshipful cults of surgery and psychoanalysis, and the costly cosmeticians of the death industry. Though his mind is finer than his means, Gelber is an intellectual twister and swinger with a phantasmagorial sense of the present...
...didn't. Instead, rock 'n' roll did. Rejuvenation came in 1960 on the wings of a king-sized twister named Chubby Checker. A onetime Philadelphia chicken plucker, Chubby threw his tubby hips into high gear, and issued an invitation: "C'mon, baby, let's do the twist...