Mickey Cole • Lubbock, TX • Class of 1970 and 1977

I graduated from Southland High School in 1967 with 9 others. That right...our senior class had 10 members! It was quite a shock to my system to think about attending a college as large as Texas Tech!

My family could afford to send me to college, but could not afford the cost of a dormitory. I started summer classes the week after graduation with my MOM! My dad decided that she was smart enough to be a teacher and help supplement the family income. So we drove back and forth to Tech from Southland, about a 45 minute drive. She majored in elementary education and I was secondary Ed aiming to be a math teacher. We went each semester and looked forward to graduation in the spring of 1970. We even had our picture made together in our cap and gowns.

Some of you might remember May of 1970. That was when a tornado struck! Much around the Tech area was destroyed. Graduation was cancelled and my mom and I never got to walk across that stage. I only have a picture to remember our special time together at Tech.

Holmes Brannon • Shamrock, TX

So many great memories of my life at Texas Tech! Great professors, like Dr. John Paul Strain of the School of Education, campus events, dancing at Eli's, cheap dinners at the Tower of Pizza, etc. But the most vivid memory of my college days is the night in 1969 when the tornadoes slammed into Lubbock. When I think of it, the song that plays through my mind is "Oh What a Night!"

That evening, I was in the Tech Theatre rehearsing a play when the storm alarms went off. The cast and crew were herded into the basement below the stage to await the "all clear." As I recall, it was a party atmosphere, laughing, talking excitedly while listening to the roar of wind, rain and hail above our heads while we sat dry and safe. Suddenly, the power failed leaving us in total darkness for a few seconds until the emergency lights popped on. That stopped all conversation. What we next heard was nothing...total silence. Of course, curiosity got the best of us and we stumbled up the stairs, through the auditorium and outside to witness, for the first time, Texas Tech totally swathed in darkness.

The air was still, but rent with the wail of police and emergency vehicle sirens. I ran back into the box office to call my wife. By some miracle the phones still worked and I got her on the line. "It's over, honey, everything is okay." "Okay hell!" she shouted, "The roof is gone!" Normally, it took me five minutes or less to get to our apartment house (the Westernaire) at Avenue X and University. This night it took me almost 30 minutes. When I got to the front of the library I realized that several of the giant oaks fronting the Ad Building had blown over across the street. I had to drive up on and over Memorial Circle to get around them and make it to University. Our apartment house was U-shaped. Our side of the U was intact but the roof on the other side had been peeled back like a sardine can. Wifey and our dog, who had had puppies three days before, were shaken but okay. The rest of the month was spent helping other students not so lucky, picking up debris and mourning the dead and injured. The 1969 graduation ceremonies were cancelled because coliseum was being used as a homeless shelter and first aid center. It didn't matter. We were just happy to be alive. Edward Bulwer-Lytton famously wrote, "It was a dark and stormy night. Ol' B-L didn't know half of it!

Luke Cotton • Fort Worth, TX • Class of 2014

When doing homecoming invitations in in October 2011 a massive dust storm aka 'Haboob' swept over Greek Circle while a bunch of fraternity guys: dressed up in suits, carrying musical instruments, and carrying heavy glass vases of flowers, scrambled around the neighborhood trying to outrun the storm and each other to the sorority houses. We unfortunately lost and had to stand outside, under the awning luckily, while other fraternities pitched homecoming for the next year. As you might expect, our presentation of dusty flowers and suits did not go well, and we didn't get a homecoming date. While it upset me at the time, it's a hilarious sequence of events and story of weird fraternity competition in hindsight.

PS I have time lapse photos of me running away from the storm, as it closes the gap on me, while carrying heavy vase in arm.

David Teska • Lawrence, KS • Class of 1986

I was not native to west Texas although I was born at Fort Hood. I transferred to Tech in 1983 and would spent three years there. For all three years I lived in Coleman Hall on the 9th floor. I don't remember when during that three year period the weather event occurred but I will never forget it.

I was in my room looking across the courtyard when I saw a massive wall of dust coming towards Lubbock. It must have been 100, if not 1,000s of feet high and stretch east and west toward the horizon. Within minutes it was over the campus, cutting of the light and reducing visibility. The sky became a thick, brown haze. Then it started to rain - rain mud. As soon as it had arrived it past, the sun again coming out and the air returning to normal.

I'd been drying a t-shirt outside the window and during the excitement forgot it was there. I brought it in side - it was wet and coated with dirt. I only saw that phenomenon once in my three years in Lubbock but I will never forget it.

Ashley Morris • Towson, MD • Class of 2014 & 2016

As a Geophysics and Atmospheric Science student, watching the skies was a favorite pastime of mine while at school. From severe thunderstorms to ice storms to large hail - West Texas weather never disappointed!

I will never forget the day TTU campus went black and then red like Mars due to a rare haboob. A haboob is a giant wall of dust associated with a strong front or outflow boundary. In October 2011, a strong front brought a haboob that turned campus dark! Campus lights turned on and then there was an eerie red glow similar to living on Mars. I'll never forget cleaning the red dust out of the doors of my car.

Nicolas Lessault • San Francisco, CA

I will always remember this one Thursday where my friends and I spent some time at the outdoor pool on campus, weather was great, hot and sunny. We went to Crickets that same night and walking back to Carpenter/Wells I was freezing. The following Friday, class was canceled due to snow.

Margaret Boeneke • Round Rock, TX • Class of 2004

As I was leaving campus one afternoon a rainstorm kicked up. I wasn't worried because I had my umbrella, but as I approached the edge of the commuter lot, the road between me and my car looked more like a canal. Those flat roads in Lubbock can flood so fast!

As I stood on the sidewalk getting up the courage to sacrifice my shoes and wade into the ankle-deep water, a fellow student pulled his pickup up on the sidewalk and asked if I needed a lift across the flooded street. He dropped me off a few yards away by my car, saving my shoes and cementing my belief that Red Raiders are the friendliest people on earth!

Michael Barnes • Ft. Worth, TX • Class of 1975

I was in architectural lab when I looked at the stadium and the light poles collapsed in high winds.

Rick Adams • Waxahachie, TX • Class of 1984

Growing up in El Paso We rarely saw any snowfall and if we did it was a dusting. 1980 Fall Finals week it started snowing and snowing. It must of snowed a foot. Since we had been studying for several days, everyone had cabin fever, I remember getting into a huge snowball fight outside Weymouth Hall at Midnight that lasted 3 hours. Ahh to be young again. I still return to Tech several times a year for football and baseball games. Love That town........

Timothy Bushong • Lubbock, TX • Class of 2019 and 2023

There was a downpour that came randomly some autumn day during my undergraduate years. I was in the chemistry building and had to make it all the way to Sneed without an umbrella (I know, rookie mistake, but I had no idea how weird the weather was in Lubbock at the time). Running past the science key, I was about to arrive to the cover of the Math building, alongside a group of students waiting out the storm, when I fell flat on my back. It was embarrassing, but I just had to laugh it off.

Mary Mitchell • Rockwall, TX • Class of 1993

My craziest Texas Tech Weather story happened the first semester of my Freshman year. When I left my dorm (Hulen) and headed to my History class at Holden Hall the temperature was in the low 70's and it was a typical sunny fall day in Lubbock. I came out of my class 1.5 hours later to a temperature drop of close to 30 degrees, wind gusts in the upper 30+ MPH with sand and dirt blowing so hard that it felt like I was getting sand blasted as I made my way across campus back to my dorm. Before I could make it all the way back, it began to rain muddy water due to the dust storm that was blowing in, as the temperature continued to drop.

Drenched, wet, cold, and dirty from the muddy rain, I made it up to the 6th floor of the dorm and decided I needed to take a warm shower. As I gathered my things to go down the hall to the showers I heard the pelting of sleet and hail on my dorm room window. I took a quick shower, and then sat down to call my mom to tell her how crazy the weather was in Lubbock TX, and before I got off the phone with her it began to snow as well. This all happened in mid October which was even crazier for this Dallas girl who had NEVER seen snow that early in the year.

In less than 3 hours time I witnessed sunny skies, a temperature drop of more than 35 degrees, high winds, dust storm, muddy rain, hail, sleet, and SNOW. Craziest weather day of my life.

Pat Dilworth Warren • Dallas, TX • Class of 1969

It was September 18, 1965, my very first game to march in the Goin' Band. We were playing a Kansas team, and the storm clouds went from bad to worse. We lined up and marched to the stadium, bravely belting out the march Grandioso,and the game began. In those days nobody had a phone to check the radar, but all you really had to do was look at the sky!

The Kansas coaches really hated to agree to call the game off even though there was a lot of lightning, as Tech was ahead and would be declared the winner if they called it off. Finally, in the fourth quarter, as the take shelter sirens went on, both coaches were in agreement that they were done! We heard there was a tornado headed down Fourth, but it just hadn't touched down yet! The band was dismissed to get back to our dorms the best we could, and everybody was worried about the instruments.

I was afraid all the pads in my clarinet might come unglued from the rain. I got back to Drane Hall, which was a girls' freshman dorm in those days. Wool band uniforms smell a little like wet sheep when they get wet, but the rule was that we had to duck and cover in the downstairs hallways. So it was a good while before we could go up to our rooms to change! I ended up marching in the band for four years in spite of it all, and graduated in January of 1969.

Julie Johnson Bryant • Fort Worth, TX • Class of 1984

You haven't lived until you've tried to cross 19th street after one of the rare deluges of rain and get a full soaking from a passing car as the driver flies a plume of water over your head -- on purpose.