Posted on 04/03/2024 5:10:58 PM PDT by basalt
I was nearby in Indianapolis at Marian College. My roommate had his house completely demolished in Cincinnati. His brother’s car was found 500 yards away upside down in a creek. My parents’home had just Hail damage. Two other friends at Marian had some damage. It took 4 hours to call home for me. All the lines were busy or just gone.
I was riding around on a bicycle in E. Tennessee.
It was something different, crazy winds all day.
Orange Sky.
Not sure the time but guess around 4pm.
Wind completely ceased for a number of seconds and all hell broke loose.
Stuff was flying around, metal trash cans coming at me.
The tornado was near. That was a hair-raising scary thing.
Went home and ordered to the basement by dad.
yeah...its one of the best ive seen...
Here in Michigan our "tornado alley" seems to be in the Flint area. 70 years ago the Flint/Beecher twister (F5/261mph winds) killed 116, injured 844.
Had relatives in Lima, OH... almost seems like every time we went there in the summer...there'd be a big storm.
I remember this date, although we weren’t in a official tornado, the winds whipped hard enough to twist and then fell a huge 80 ft oak tree parallel to our house. Had it fell otherwise, it could have bisected our house with us kids eating our hamburger and fries.
Our mom was watching the storm while we ate and saw the tree swaying back and forth, each time further and further. She told us preteen kids to head to the hallway and she took one of our bed mattress and lean it against the wall.We loved it. We felt a big temor and boom but ignored it as just thunder and lightning.
When the storm passed and we were finished eating,vwe we’re shocked to see the massive oak lying on its side.
We made it our own playground set until Pop started cutting it for firewood.
We had a lot of firewood that winter!
Tennessee got the most Tornadoes that day...as for the conditions that day, know just what you mean. I was 16 years old then and was living in SE Michigan, right outside Detroit. I saw conditons that day that ive never seen before or since. Starting in the late morning, its was very strangely warm and humid for early April..low 70’s. All day, there was an almost constant, swirling 25-30 M.P.H.wind. What i remember most was how low the cloud cover was...i swear it was almost tree top level. The sky was a dark, gun metal gray and was just racing along...then suddenly the sky would open and you could see an upper level of clouds just blazing along in the opposite direction, then at times the sun would shine thru, giving everything a greenish-yellow tint..just stone creepy. Odd thing is, my area never got any storms of any kind that day..no rain no nothing, although about 7 P.M., the Windsor storm hit across the river and 8 were killed. But just from the conditions i saw that day, you just knew something really bad was happening some place...
Yea, everything was just a watch back then.
Not any real-time information. I was just riding around the neighborhood.
That day is one that had a strange feel. Everything I knew up to that point was different.
I had no idea it was Gulf to the Great Lakes!
I am sad for the lives that were lost.
Nobody had any idea of the magnitude and scope of this front.
I have a deep respect for the power of storms, especially in spring.
Epic day! Had a friend and boss from near Brandenburg, KY who remembers looking up at the sky from his basement after they took a direct hit. They found some of his parents canceled checks hundreds of miles away in Ohio.
I was in high school but still remember that day, though I lived in Maryland. I remember looking out my west facing window to see if we were going to be hit as well.
My hometown of Guin, Alabama was decimated, but our tragedy is completely ignored.
Today the Guin Baptist Church held a memorial service for the victims. Twenty eight people were killed in our tiny town. James Spann attended today’s memorial.
My dad was the Police chief and had the grim job of identifying the bodies; Some were close family friends. He never got over that ordeal. I believe that’s one of thr reasons that he died suddenly in 1979 at the age of Fourty Nine.
The story of Guin was featured on the History Channel, but people seem determined to ignore the incredible impact of the tornado in Guin.
The tornado was an F-5, but experts stated that it eas closer to an F-6.
I was 21 and didn’t pay much attention to the news. I knew we had stormy weather in store but that was about it. My friend called and asked if I wanted to go to the overlook on the mountain to watch the “show” and I was game.
Had we known what was coming and how close it was, we probably wouldn’t have gone. Then again, when you really enjoy storms - which we did - you kinda hate to sit them out.
It was a wild ride and my eyes were glued to the west where lightning was flashing like crazy, loving every minute of it. From the overlook, we watched a fabulous “light show”, not having an inkling of how bad things were. It wasn’t until we saw the trucks on their sides during the drive back that we realized things were worse than we thought.
Driving around the next day made my hair stand on end, realizing how lucky we had been. It was the first time I’d seen tornado destruction first-hand. I’ve seen it several times since, though, and it hasn’t squelched my love of storms. We were hit during the outbreak April 27th, 2011 and it took a long time to clean this place up. Fortunately, the house wasn’t damaged. Our Guardian Angels were overhead flapping their wings that day.
Thank you everyone for your anecdotes. I’m in the middle of my 15th tornado book. It’s fascinating how so many people report they woke up with a strange feeling, or noticed an unusual sky or just felt something felt off all day.
Thank you everyone for your anecdotes. I’m in the middle of my 15th tornado book. It’s fascinating how so many people report they woke up with a strange feeling, or noticed an unusual sky or just felt something felt off all day.
We lived in the mountains of eastern Kentucky that night. I was staying with my grandpa that night. All night long he was turning the tv on getting weather reports and it finally went out and he turned the radio on. The power flicked off and at one point we went out of the porch and listened to the storm raging. It sounded like a freight train over towards my parents house and he grabbed me and ran inside and called them to see if they were okay, thankfully the phones were still working. Dad was mopping water in the basement and heard the tornado go over the house at a higher altitude. The house was at the foot of a mountain and the next morning one could see where the tornado had hit dead center some communication antennas on top of the mountain and apparently hadn’t dropped down but continued on at it’s same altitude saving my parents house and lots of others. It was a long scary night.
1974. During THE COMING ICE AGE hysteria.
We now live in a particularly prone area of N Alabama and it’s pretty clear from the history here (’74, ‘11, ‘14, etc)that living next to a mountain can help a lot but it’s not 100%.
bkmk
Apparently bodies of water can have an effect too. There’s a lake maybe a half mile west of me and tornados seem to bounce over it. The one that came through April 2011 went directly over the house, low enough to twist the tops of a few trees, and touched down again about a half mile east. The one that came through Nov. 2016 went across the back of the farm, touching down again less than a mile east. One came through last spring, passing over the farm across the road, touching down again about a quarter mile east.
We had damage at the farm from the straight line winds being sucked into the vortex but it would have been a lot worse had the funnels been on the ground.
I’ve thanked my lucky stars all three times and hope the luck holds out! LOL
14 yrs. later a tornado did get down into the little town near us in 1988 and wreaked havoc. Fortunately it hit at night and there were very few people in the downtown area. It killed one woman and severely injured her son and there were a few other injuries, but lots of buildings destroyed.
We found parts of airport hangers on our property in the mountains where the tornado had lifted and weakened and started dropping objects.
Are you reading or writing?
Yes, there’s just something about a day that can kick off an outbreak. Animals are very attuned to things like that but most people aren’t. Some do pick up on things amiss.
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