30 years ago..tornado super outbreak

[Shutterbug]

In a little more than 16 hours, 148 tornadoes killed 330 people in 13 states, injured thousands and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

Has anyone here been through a twister or have seen one?

 

[LindaR]

Yep, having lived in Ohio til I was 21 years old....


I was in 6th grade, on my way out the door for safety patrol (school was getting out for the day) and I spotted a funnel cloud across the street (above the grocery store), ran back inside and told the secretary.......later we found out that it had touched down at DCSC and then again at the outskirts of the airport. That same day, my dad who was in the National Guard, was sent to Xenia.....when he came home, that was the first time I had ever seen him cry......

 

[phamton]

We had been under a tornado warning in Amarillo, TX in 1989. Watches and warnings are not too unusual there but when we got the warning my husband and I grabbed the kids and took them to our private business that had a basement. We waited in the basement there until the warning was called off. My husband drove the van with the kids and I followed in my smaller car to go home. About 10 blocks from home, I hit some flooding on the road that I couldn't see until I was in it. My little car started floating. I jumped out and waded to the van. We drove home and put the kids to bed. We have 5 kids, whose ages at the time were 6 months, 2 years, twins age 7, and oldest daughter age 13 years. We got all the younger kids to bed and asked our oldest to babysit while we went down the road to push my car out of the road. We figured we'd be back in about 15 minutes.

We got to my car and pushed it out of the road and heard tornado sirens going off. We rushed into the 7-11 store by my car and they said a tornado just hit our subdivision. Then the rain started pouring down. We could not drive the 10 blocks to our house because the road was now completely flooded and other cars were floating. We tried to go a different way which took us over 45 minutes to get home. We drove in from the backside of our subdivision. There were already police blockades and they weren't letting anyone in. We frantically explained that our 5 kids were alone so they gave us a pass to go in.

The house behind us was flattened and the whole area was a mess. We ran in and found all of our kids hiding in the laundry room. My daughter had heard the tornado and grabbed the baby, told the twins to get the toddler, and they ran into the laundry room. Everyone was fine but scared. The kids were afraid that the tornado had gotten us.

Later we heard from the neighbors that they watched the tornado come right down almost on top of our house and then dipped down and got the house across the alley from us. (No one was home there.) Many homes were destroyed but no one was killed or even seriously injured. I gained a healthy respect for tornadoes that day. I had seen numerous tornadoes while growing up in West Texas and later in the panhandle of Texas. I even watched twin tornadoes from my front yard as a teenager. I never really feared them until that day.

 

[Shutterbug]

Originally posted by LindaR
Yep, having lived in Ohio til I was 21 years old....


I was in 6th grade, on my way out the door for safety patrol (school was getting out for the day) and I spotted a funnel cloud across the street (above the grocery store), ran back inside and told the secretary.......later we found out that it had touched down at DCSC and then again at the outskirts of the airport. That same day, my dad who was in the National Guard, was sent to Xenia.....when he came home, that was the first time I had ever seen him cry......

Yes that was an F5 that tore through Xenia killing 33 people.
I think it was this that got my interest in tornadoes. Every time there is something on the weather channel or TLC I'm watching.

 

[Shutterbug]

wow phamton!
you're story ran chills through me!

 

[Stepharoonie!]

Luckily, we don't really deal with that much here in Orlando. The thought of tornadoes really frightens me!

 

[Dan Murphy]

I recall it well. Tornado season is here, always rough in the Midwest.

 

[dis4harley]

They are also rough in the South. i have been in a house when it was destroyed. The tornado got in a 100 year old tree right beside the house and brought it down right thru the middle of it.I was about 5 feet from the tree.

That was the year before the Palm Sunday tornado in northest Alabama.I live in the same area.

 

[CindyKansas]

I live in Kansas and I have never actually seen a tornado, I have lived here most of my life. I did live in Idaho for a year after graduating from college. Anyway, we had our first tornado warning of the season a week ago today. It went north of our town, thank goodness. 2 years ago in May, we had a tornado warning for our town and I made my DH drive us 10 miles south to a small town called Sawyer. We stopped and listened to the radio and when they said it was all clear we drove home. 3 miles out of town you knew that we had actually had a tornado touch down. Trees and debris were everywhere. When we got to our home our DD wooden fort was in the empty lot south of us. Her wooden swingset had blown over. A block west of us I could see the roofs of houses completely gone. Our home had hail damage and some wind damage. But at least we had a home. Many people lost their homes that night. There were injuries in town but no one was killed, which was an amazing thing.

 

[Feralpeg]

Oh, yeah! In fact, last year was a bad year. We had an F4 that moved through the Kansas City area. It took out several neighborhoods, including one very close to us. It was very scary! I'm not going to miss living in Tornado Alley!

 

[Virgo10]

I've seen two funnel clouds here in SE MA. For those of you who live around here, the first one was right near the Hanover Mall in the 1970's. The second was in the mid 90's in Braintree! Neither time did they touch the ground and become tormados. Lucky for me. I was so spell bound I would have still been standing there with my mouth open when they jumped on my head.

I'm also totally intriqued with these storms and never pass up an opportunity to watch shows about them. I have no real desire to see one in person though.

Roberta