Summer thunderstorms in Texas are about as common as pickup trucks on dusty backroads. It was in one of those backroad towns that a storm many years ago created one of the most bizarre events in nature. Shortly after midnight on June 15, 1960, a dying thunderstorm passed over the town of Kopperl in Bosque County, Texas. Instead of cooling rains, a blast of superheated 75 mph winds descended on the town, sending temperatures soaring from 70º to an estimated 140º within minutes. Residents reported that it was so hard to breathe that it was like “sticking your head in an oven.” The damage left behind was as strange as the storm itself. Crops withered, and corn cooked on its stalks. Outside leaves were all shriveled up like they had been baked from the inside out. One farmer reported that 140 acres of his cotton burned to a state of crispiness. It’s also said that automobile radiators reached boiling point that night. Meteorologists believe the phenomenon was an extreme example of a rare “heat burst.” A heat burst is an atmospheric phenomenon caused by a rapidly dying thunderstorm where descending air accelerates to the ground, compressing and heating rapidly. It produces sudden, dramatic spikes in temperature, plummeting dew points, and fierce, dry wind gusts, typically occurring at night when storms collapse in dry environments. In the 66 years since the heat burst — which residents of Kopperl dubbed “Satan’s Storm” — it has never again happened, and residents hope it never does.
