 It rained all night on Wednesday, 10 Mar 1920. The clouds were still ominous and rain was still falling the next morning, 11 Mar 1920. The residents who lived in or near Melva, in Taney County, MO, watched the creeks risingand kept an eye on the sky as they went about their housework and business that morning. The children didn't go to school that day, for no one could get across Turkey Creek; the teacher wouldn't be there, either. Shortly after noon, the skies made good on their threat. A tornado approached from the southwest and destroyed most of the homes and businesses which made up the small town. The tornado continued its path to the northeast, missing Kirbyville by a narrow margin and wreaking havoc in "the Pleasant Hill district," near Forsyth. It seems to have finished near Taneyville. Although newspaper accounts say that it lifted and skipped, modern weather technology dismisses that by claiming that tornadoes do not skip--that skips indicate more than one tornado. But most of the hilltops in the path of the tornado sustained at least some damage, and little damage occurred in the valleys. Note that an article on Melva, written by Dorothy Stacey Cummings, appears in the White River Valley Historical Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 9 Fall 1963 issue.
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