May 31, 1985 — The United States–Canada Outbreak

[NOTE: Mouse over or click on individual photos for larger versions and more info. Also, I’ve created an interactive map of the outbreak to make it easier to follow along. It includes every known tornado track as well as every fatality, so feel free to zoom and pan around or navigate via the menu on the left side of the screen.]

While this article was meant to be read as one piece, I realize it can be a bit overwhelming. To that end, I’ve included a table of contents that should hopefully make navigation a little easier:

1. Niles Park Plaza
2. The Elevated Mixed Layer
3. The Prelude
4. Trouble Brewing
5. Rush Cove, ON F2
6. A Wicked Breeze
7. Where the Hell Is This Thing?
8. Hopeville, ON F2
9. Corbetton, ON F3
10. Grand Valley, ON F4
11. Lisle, ON F2
12. Barrie, ON F4
13. Tornado Watch #211
14. Albion, PA F4
15. Mesopotamia, OH F3
16. Linesville, PA F2
17. Atlantic, PA F4
18. Corry, PA F4
19. Saegertown, PA F3
20. Centerville, PA F3
21. Wagner Lake, ON F2
22. Reaboro, ON F2
23. Alma, ON F3
24. Ida, ON F2
25. Rice Lake, ON F3
26. The Spark Arrives
27. Niles, OH-Wheatland, PA F5
28. Tionesta, PA F4
29. Johnstown, OH F3
30. Tidioute, PA F3
31. Undocumented Tornadoes
32. New Waterford, OH F3
33. Moshannon State Forest F4
34. Dotter, PA F2
35. Kane, PA F4
36. Beaver Falls, PA F3
37. Elimsport, PA F4
38. Drums, PA F1

---

Niles Park Plaza

The sky grows dark and threatening as swollen storm clouds roll in from the west, extinguishing the late-afternoon sun. Shade trees bend and creak in protest, their broad canopies quivering in the wind. Rain comes in fits and starts, spattering against the windshield in fat, heavy droplets.

None of it matters to Ronnie Grant. After one of the proudest and happiest days of his life, a few thundershowers won’t dampen his spirits. His daughter has just graduated high school — in a few months, she’ll begin her scholarship at a prestigious university halfway across the country. In the meantime, he and his wife Jill are heading out to celebrate at their favorite local restaurant.

A lineman for the utility company, Ronnie has lived in Northeast Ohio all his life. He’s driven this stretch of U.S. 422 so many times he can do it in his sleep, arcing north and west from Girard through the outskirts of Niles. As he crests a hill overlooking a commercial strip on the city’s northeast side, the gossamer veil of rain begins to lift.

His wife gasps and stiffens in her seat. He opens his mouth to speak but the words catch in his throat. Something is terribly wrong, and suddenly the whole world is unmoored from the flow of time. Seconds linger like minutes, unfolding in a stilted, stop-motion fashion that only adds to the deep and pervasive sense of unreality. Without thinking, he instinctively pulls off the highway and slides to a stop.

He can hardly process what he’s seeing, yet every image is seared into Ronnie’s brain with inexplicable and excruciating clarity. The black, debris-choked funnel, looming like a vast shadow against the sky. The familiar outlines of homes and businesses forever disappearing, consumed in an instant by a violent, seething darkness.

The monster moves with manic energy, rapidly crossing U.S. 422 and sweeping into Niles Park Plaza. Fragments of lumber and aluminum and steel erupt in all directions like the blast wave of a grenade. Roofs and walls sail away and break apart, adding to the ever-growing cloud of wreckage.

A large, bright-colored object whirls up into the air, spinning like a helicopter. And then another. And another. The shapes are distinct and immediately recognizable — vehicles. Ronnie’s stomach turns at the realization, but he can’t look away. He watches helplessly as one car is torn apart, disgorging its occupants. Within moments, they disappear into the middle of the raging maelstrom.

They will not be the last.

May 3, 1999 — The Bridge Creek–Moore Tornado

“If you haven’t gone to the cellar, you really need to go now. This is a huge circulation. There are vortices everywhere. This is extremely dangerous, so you folks in the path of this tornado, get below ground. If you can’t do that, get in the center part of your house, a closet or bathroom. Get on the east or north wall. Lots of pillows and blankets. Get in the bathtub. Put the kids in the bathtub, get on top of the kids. This is extremely dangerous.“

The words reverberated across Central Oklahoma, amplified by television sets and radios stretching from Tulsa to the Texas border. The voice, as familiar to Oklahomans as the rustling of wheat fields or the boom of thunder, belonged to KWTV News 9 Chief Meteorologist Gary England. It was the moment he’d been steeling himself for since June 8, 1974, when a devastating tornado killed 14 people with little warning in and around the town of Drumright.

It was a tragic event, but Gary understood that it was nothing compared to a potential worst-case scenario. In fact, he was certain that one day, a massive, violent F5 tornado would drop from the wide-open prairie skies and tear a path of unprecedented destruction right through the increasingly populated heart of the Oklahoma City Metro. The carnage of such an event was almost too much to imagine.

There had been plenty of close calls over the years, plenty of urgent cut-ins to implore viewers and listeners to take shelter and keep themselves safe. Still, the city at the heart of Tornado Alley usually escaped with little more than glancing blows. But on this day — this warm, humid Monday afternoon in May of 1999 — the state’s seasoned weather sage knew that Oklahoma’s luck had just run out.

April 5–6, 1936 — The Tupelo–Gainesville Outbreak

Note: I’m trying something a bit different for this article: many of the photos have been colorized. In addition to the visual impact, I think adding color can help bring out details that might otherwise go overlooked.

The 1930s was a decade of turbulence, ushered in by a devastating worldwide financial crisis and bookended by the onset of the most calamitous war in human history. The high spirits and irrational exuberance of the Roaring Twenties came to a screeching halt in the final days of October 1929, as the prosperity and dynamism of the Jazz Age were consumed in the fiery crash of the American economy. 

Beginning on October 23, a flurry of profit-taking on Wall Street caused a sharp decline in stock prices. The next day, the widespread sell-off reached a frenzied pitch. By October 29, Black Tuesday, the stock market was in a tailspin and panic had set in among investors. From the dizzying heights of an unprecedented decade of optimism and wealth, the most powerful economy on Earth suddenly and irrevocably collapsed into ruin.

Within two weeks, the stock market had lost 40 percent of its value. At a time when the entire federal budget of the United States was just over $3 billion, investors had lost a staggering $35 billion. The effects were swift and devastating. Ordinary citizens, panicked and losing faith in the entire financial system, rushed to empty their bank accounts while they still could. Without cash reserves, the banks soon failed. Those who didn’t withdraw their money quickly enough lost their entire savings.

With no banks to lend them money, businesses cut back their workforce or closed altogether. With fewer jobs and less money to go around, consumer spending fell rapidly. Shops closed their doors, factories incurred massive layoffs and wage reductions, and unemployment skyrocketed. By the bleak and dreary winter of 1932, a full quarter of all American workers — nearly 13 million people — found themselves without a job.

In the primarily agricultural midsection of the country, a region normally insulated from the far-off financial troubles of the East Coast, the situation was exacerbated by the worst drought in the history of the United States. Many years of poor farming practices had left the land vulnerable, and the extreme drought turned much of the central United States into a crippling Dust Bowl. 

Clouds occasionally appeared in the brittle blue skies, drifting over the desiccated landscape and seeming to promise some small break from the heat and dirt and dust, but the rains rarely came. The land cracked, crumbled and blew away with the winds, sending massive, billowing clouds of dust across the country’s midsection. Billions of tons of once-rich topsoil were scoured from millions of acres of land. The crops withered and died, and with them, the hopes of the nation’s desperate farmers.

By the mid-1930s, the Dust Bowl stretched as far south as Texas and as far north as the Canadian Prairies. For many, suffocating dust storms were a part of daily life. The gritty, wind-whipped palls turned day to night, reducing visibility to a few feet and infiltrating every crack and crevice of every prairie home. So large and intense were the black blizzards that dust-choked rain and snow fell in muddy slurries as far away as Vermont and New Hampshire.

After the “black blizzards” subsided, wind-whipped drifts of topsoil often reached to the roofs of homes.

A “black blizzard” strikes in March 1936 in the Oklahoma Panhandle.

Wind lashes the desolate, dusty landscape of Cimarron County, Oklahoma in April 1936.

A towering dust storm looms over Ulysses, KS on Black Sunday, April 14, 1935.

---

By 1936, the crushing burden of the Great Depression had slowly begun to ease. The Dust Bowl, however, continued to ravage the Great Plains and parts of the Midwest. Experts estimated that the total affected area had spread to encompass more than five million acres, with nearly a billion tons of topsoil lost in the previous year alone. Hundreds of thousands of farmers, battered and broken by their futile efforts to wrest a living from the barren land, packed up and headed west toward California, Oregon, and Washington.

Drawn by the promise of a better life, so many people joined the migration that authorities in California organized border patrols in an attempt to keep out the invading “Okies” — so-called because so many had come from hard-hit Oklahoma. Those who succeeded in making the trip often became itinerants, drifting from place to place in search of any work they could find.

“Migrant Mother,” one of the most indelible images of the 20th century, was taken in March of 1936. The subject, Florence Thompson, was a widowed migrant worker at a camp for out-of-work pea pickers in Nipomo, California.

Unfortunately, debilitating drought and lingering economic depression were not the only problems plaguing the nation in 1936. In a remarkable display of climatic volatility, the weather swung wildly from one extreme to another throughout much of the country. Beginning in December 1935 and continuing through the end of January, virtually the entire country was locked in the grips of freezing weather. Parts of the Southeast and Upper Midwest experienced record cold while the Pacific Northwest, Southeast and Eastern Seaboard saw record or near-record precipitation. Significant snowfalls were recorded as far south as Montgomery, Alabama.

Niagara’s American Falls frozen solid in early February, 1936.

From late January through February, another wave of bone-rattling cold spilled down from the Arctic and invaded much of the United States. Blizzard after blizzard rolled across the northern half of the country, dumping feet of snow in great swaths from the Northern Rockies all the way to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. The Niagara Falls froze solid for more than a week, forcing the hydroelectric power plant to shut down for the first time in its history. Back-to-back blizzards brought more than a foot of snow and hurricane-force wind gusts to the Eastern Seaboard, crippling the New York and Washington, DC metropolitan areas.

Snowfall and temperature records fell in dozens of states as the historic cold spell intensified. Snow drifts reached the roofs of two-story homes and completely shut down transportation in many areas throughout the northern half of the country. Snowfall totals for the winter ranged from 15″ to as much as 60″ above normal. In some places, the average daily high temperature for the month of February fell well below zero. In North Dakota, the monthly average temperature was a record-shattering -14.1° F.

A fierce nor’easter on January 19 battered New York City with hurricane-force winds and more than a foot of snow, bringing traffic to a standstill and stranding streetcars along 7th Avenue in Times Square.

By the time February mercifully came to an end, the national monthly average temperature registered just 25.23° F, nearly 10° below normal. It was the coldest month in United States history. With a string of hard-hitting blizzards and temperatures that rarely peaked above freezing, snowpacks throughout much of the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast were running anomalously high.

As the calendar turned to March and yet another furious snowstorm blanketed the region, the stage was set for the first in a historic, unprecedented string of disasters.

---

April 9, 1947 – The Woodward Tornado

[Click photos to view larger versions.]

The morning of April 9, 1947 dawned cool, breezy and decidedly gloomy across the Southern Plains. Thick fog descended like a blanket, reducing visibility to near zero in some locations. Patchy drizzle broke out from low, sullen clouds and fell as a fine mist over the expansive fields of sorghum and winter wheat. Farmers and ranchers rose before first light, thankful for every drop of rain that could be coaxed from the sky after several months of drought. The animals, like the weather, seemed to be unsettled. Cattle huddled together as if for protection from some unknown menace. Horses whimpered and fidgeted uneasily. Milk cows protested and balked at the prospect of their morning milking. To old timers, these behaviors seemed to portend a storm. Still, April was always a fickle month, bringing radiant warmth, biting cold and booming storms to the Southern Plains in seemingly equal measure. With temperatures struggling to reach 50 degrees and a dense stratus deck choking out the morning sun, the conditions hardly brought to mind the “tornado weather” that a lifetime of living in Tornado Alley had taught residents to fear and respect. However, unknown to the people below, the vast, chaotic machinery of the atmosphere had already set into motion a series of events that would culminate in perhaps the greatest storm in the region’s long and bitter history.

June 7-9, 1953 — The Flint – Worcester Outbreak

[Click photos for larger versions.]

Note: I’m trying something a bit different with this article. I’ve added endnotes for references and comments that don’t fit in the article itself, clicking any of them will take you to the bottom of the page. Clicking on the circumflex (^) next to each number should bring you back to the appropriate spot. If you encounter any problems, please let me know.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

It was a time of buoyant optimism in the United States. Less than a decade after the American industrial machine first roared to life in a bid to help vanquish the Axis forces in World War II, the baby boom was well underway. Though the spectre of an apocalyptic nuclear war with the Soviet Union loomed ever-present and the Korean War continued to drag on, the country was thriving. The middle class had expanded rapidly, thanks in part to the strength of domineering unions, and consumerism and conservatism came to dominate much of American life. Scientists Francis Crick and James D. Watson prepared to unveil the double-helix structure of DNA. The first production Corvette – a sleek white convertible with red interior and a black canvas top – rolled off the production line at the iconic General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan. The manufacturer’s 50 millionth car, a golden-hued 1955 Chevy Bel Aire Sport Coupe, would be produced at the same plant in November of the following year. In December, Marilyn Monroe’s nude figure would be immortalized in the first issue of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine.

The “Climax” bomb test resulted in a tremendously powerful explosion.

The Cold War was never far from the surface, however. On the arid, sandy Yucca Flat in the eastern portion of the Nevada Test Site, the U.S. Military conducted a frenzied series of atomic bomb tests in a never-ending effort to keep a leg up on the Soviets in the developing nuclear arms race. In the predawn hours of June 4, a Convair B-36 Peacemaker rumbled down the runway at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico and took to the dark skies 40,000 feet above the test range. As the first Air Force plane capable of delivering any nuclear device in the military’s arsenal without modifying its bomb bays, the B-36 quickly became the go-to choice for delivering a nuclear payload. As the doors to one of the plane’s bomb bays eased open, a relatively small, 30-inch fission bomb released and plummeted toward earth. At approximately 1,500 feet, a brilliant white flash and a gigantic, churning fireball burst into the sky. The bomb, codenamed “Climax” and a part of the curiously named “Operation Upshot-Knothole” series, was the most powerful ever tested on United States soil at the time, releasing a staggering 61 kilotons of explosive energy. The blast could be seen from Los Angeles and felt more than 500 miles away in Oregon, where it reportedly rattled windows and knocked items off shelves.

And despite a relatively quiet start to the year, the weather had been making the news as well. Just before 4:30pm on May 11, one of the deadliest tornadoes in the nation’s history tore a path through the heart of Waco, Texas. The six-story R.T. Dennis furniture store collapsed under the violent force of the wind, crushing 32 people inside. The same story repeated as pedestrians scurried inside several other large downtown buildings to escape the pounding rain, only to be killed when the structures gave way. Still others were crushed while trying to escape in their vehicles. When the dust settled and the victims had finally been extracted from the massive piles of rubble, 114 people had lost their lives. Another 13 were killed further to the west when more than a dozen blocks on the north side of San Angelo were obliterated by an extremely intense tornado. Though no one could have known at the time, it was about to get much, much worse.

This drawing, sketched by Truman Caldwell and completed by Waco Tribune-Herald artist Dick Boone, illustrates the tornado as Caldwell witnessed it while driving home toward the city.

 

March 18, 1925 — The Tri-State Tornado

[Click photos to view larger versions.]

Deep in the Ozark Mountains, in places scarcely changed through nine decades, there are legends of a monster. Though few, if any, still live to tell the tale first-hand, the tradition persists, straddling the line between fact and myth. In the Shawnee Hills of Southern Illinois, too, old-timers pass on the legend. Indeed, across three states and more than 200 miles, folks of a certain generation recall harrowing accounts by those who witnessed death drop from the sapphire sky one balmy pre-spring afternoon in 1925. Over three and a half hours, the Great Tri-State Tornado roared through the southern portions of Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, wiping town after town off the map as it ripped through forests and farmlands, over peaks and hollows, and across the mighty Mississippi River at speeds sometimes exceeding 70 mph. When the greatest tornado disaster in recorded history finally came to an end some 219 miles later, 695 people laid dead and more than a dozen towns and hundreds of farmsteads were left in splinters.

July 6, 1893 — Pomeroy, Iowa

[Note: Click photos for larger versions.]

The air was oppressive, clinging like a hot, damp blanket draped across the heartland of the United States. Despite a cooling rain the previous night and a thick blanket of clouds through the morning, midday sunshine pushed temperatures past 90 degrees by early afternoon in northwest Iowa. After a warm and dry beginning to the summer, rain was a welcome sight for the many farmers who wrested a living from the fertile prairie soil. As towering thunderheads began to burst into the muggy afternoon skies, however, concern began to grow. A stiff breeze picked up, blowing from the south and east with enough force to rustle trees and hold flags at attention. This, long-time residents knew, was cyclone weather.

• • •

April 11, 1965 — Palm Sunday Outbreak

[Note: Click photos for larger versions.]

Across the upper Midwestern United States, March of 1965 was cold, snowy and miserable. The month began with blizzard conditions across the region on March 2, bringing heavy snow and a biting 50mph wind. Another, more significant blizzard would follow on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17. Several feet of snow buried the region, while 60mph winds whipped the landscape and blew the powdery snow into vast drifts tall enough to bury cars along the streets. In many locations, 1965 ranked among the top-20 coldest and snowiest Marches on record. A respite would not come until the first week of April, when a surge of warm air brought unseasonable warmth and temperatures into the low 70s. The warmth would not last long, however, as another arctic air mass settled over the region on the 8th with temperatures slipping back to the 30s and 40s.

St. Patrick’s Day Blizzard. March 17, 1965.

 

By Palm Sunday weekend a weak low pressure system was edging toward the area, drawing in warm, humid air from the Gulf Coast and pulling a mass of cold and extremely dry air behind it. A 25-knot southerly low-level jet combined with stretches of clear skies and sunshine to rocket temperatures into the mid-70s across the warm sector. With widespread dewpoints in the 60s, residents throughout the region headed outside to enjoy the first beautiful spring day of the year. In some areas, the heat grew to become oppressive. In the words of retired police chief Warren Hale of Milan, Michigan; “The day was so warm and wonderful. The family and I decided go on a picnic in the Irish Hills, because it was too stifling in the house. The heat and humidity drove us crazy so we had to just get away from it all.”

Unknown to all outside the meteorological community, a nearly unprecedented atmospheric setup was approaching from the west-southwest.

• • •

February 19, 1884 — The Enigma Outbreak

[Note: Click images to view larger versions.]

The first two months of 1884 had brought nearly ceaseless rain to much of the United States. Slate gray rain clouds had cast a pall over the land, blotting out what little late-winter sun there was to be had and inundating the already soggy ground. Grass and dirt turned to sloppy mud. Rivers and streams, swollen from the relentless precipitation, bulged and spilled over their banks. Meandering creeks transformed into raging rivers, major rivers into vast inland seas. For the first time in many days, the morning of February 19 brought a welcome respite. Morning broke to fair weather and mostly cloudless skies, and many engorged rivers began to slowly recede.

A broad, deep low pressure system was tracking across the upper Mississippi Valley just south of the Great Lakes, pulling in air from the south ahead of it. A strong southerly wind drawn from the Gulf of Mexico overspread the south with warm, soupy air. In Alabama, temperatures surged by ten degrees in the span of a few hours. In Mississippi, temperatures jumped nearly 20 degrees. Dewpoints rocketed to the mid- and upper-60s as winter-weary residents headed out to enjoy the springlike weather. Several hundred miles to the northwest, the story was much different. Trailing behind the low pressure system was a bitterly cold air mass, dragged down from high in the Arctic. Temperatures dropped by as much as 30 degrees in 24 hours with the passage of the cold front, bottoming out below zero in many places.

Surface chart from 7am. Strong southerly flow was evident ahead and south of the low, setting up a broad warm sector. Red “++++” icons indicate tornado tracks recorded in the following eight hours.

Surface chart from 3pm. Surface temperatures ranging from 60 to 75 degrees overspread much of the eastern United States ahead of the deepening low. Ground observations indicate temperatures in excess of 75 degrees actually reached as far inland as Kentucky and western Virginia.

Surface chart from 11pm. Enhanced low-level winds south and east of the rapidly deepening low, along with ample moisture, allowed for continued tornado production through the evening and overnight.

 

The negatively-tilted trough can be clearly seen on the 500mb map from noon on February 19.

A negatively-tilted trough dug southeast across the North-Central United States, while the core of an intense jet streak rapidly rounded its base. Adding to the already dangerous situation, a bulge of extremely dry air from the west began to nose in on the layer of deep moisture over the Southeast. While winds at the surface blew stiffly from the south and southeast, winds at mid-levels howled from the southwest and upper-level winds blew west to west-northwest. Additionally, wind speeds increased substantially with height throughout the atmosphere. The resulting directional and speed shear, combined with the high instability of the warm, oppressive airmass below and the dry air from the west, created ideal conditions for supercells and tornadoes over a broad area.

By mid-morning, cauliflower-shaped thunderheads began to pop up just ahead of the cold front near the Mississippi River. In the east-central Mississippi town of Winston, the southerly winds intensified and began veering toward the west-northwest. Rain came in fits, accompanied shortly thereafter by quarter-sized hail. As the precipitation abated, sharply shifting winds and a dull roar announced the arrival of the day’s first tornado. The twister destroyed two homes and a cotton gin before lifting near Louisville. Just before noon the first killer tornado barreled through the town of Columbus. Several plantations were destroyed and one woman was killed. The tornado continued its 25-mile track across the state line into Pickens County, Alabama.

At 12:20pm CST, the first violent tornado of the day touched down near Oxmoor, Alabama. The tornado tracked just southeast of Birmingham before tearing through the southern and eastern sections of the industrial town of Leeds. At least thirteen lives were lost, including four members of the Pool family, as dozens of homes were scattered in the howling wind. Newspaper reports suggest the tornado may have had a multi-vortex structure, with eyewitnesses stating that “several black shafts darted in quick succession from the cloud toward the earth.” Survivors of the tornado recounted that much of the town was left unrecognizable. Well-constructed brick homes in the area were leveled and several foundations were damaged or swept away, indicating probable F5 damage. Bodies were found impaled by various objects, and cattle and horses were reportedly skinned and dismembered. Eleven fatalities were recorded in the Leeds area. Thirty one were reportedly “gravely injured,” though the lack of subsequent reports makes it unclear how many ultimately succumbed to their injuries.

Drawing of an obliterated farmhouse near Leeds, Alabama. Artist unknown.

 

 By 1:00pm, the outbreak was nearing its peak as a broken line of supercells sprawled across much of the southeast. A small funnel descended into a field near Cartersville, Georgia. Racing to the northeast, the tornado rapidly intensified as it neared the community of Waleska. Three children were killed after they had been released from school early and taken shelter in their home. At the towns of Cagle and Tate in Pickens County, many homes were completely swept away. The majority of the affected homes belonged to prominent families and were large and well-built, indicating that this tornado, too, was perhaps of F5 intensity. The tornado and associated downbursts cut a swath nearly three miles wide through the forest, leveling homes as far apart as two miles. The bodies of several of the 22 total fatalities were reportedly carried more than half a mile. In total, the tornado and associated downbursts flattened at least 50 square miles of forest.

In East Alabama, what would prove to be perhaps the deadliest tornado of the outbreak descended from the skies just north of Jacksonville. The tornado tore through the Germania tanning yard before killing ten just north of Piedmont, then known as Cross Plains. As many as 20 lives were lost at Goshen, where a schoolmaster and six children were killed in a schoolhouse said to have been “blown to atoms.” All 19 of the remaining children were seriously injured. Large cotton bales were tossed at least half a mile, and many poorly-built homes vanished entirely. At Cave Spring, Georgia, four lives were lost and a number of well-constructed homes were scoured from the Earth. By the time the tornado had come to the end of its 35 mile path of destruction in western Georgia, it had taken more than 35 lives. Newspapers of the day made little effort to document the carnage in these rural communities, and the true death toll was likely much higher.

Shortly after 3:00pm, large hail — some three inches or more in diameter — began falling across central Georgia. The wind veered from south to northwest and the temperature began to drop. Moments later, a large multi-vortex tornado began shredding and snapping trees in Monroe County. Just northwest of Haddock, many large homes were swept away and at least eleven people were killed. Unconfirmed reports indicated at least an additional 12 fatalities. Among those killed were a mother and her four children, who had taken shelter inside their home as the storm approached. Witnesses north of Macon recounted that the tornado contained “multiple dark columns rotating about a common center.” Another 50 were injured along the 30-mile path.

At 8:30pm the final violent tornado of the outbreak began a path of destruction in southeastern Anson County, North Carolina. Two were killed and several homes were destroyed in Pee Dee. The tornado barreled through the southeast edge of the city of Rockingham. Several large homes were swept from their foundations, and large hardwood trees were reportedly debarked, denuded and snapped off near ground level. At least one victim in the area was reportedly thrown nearly a mile. The tornado intensified and widened to nearly one mile as it roared to the northeast. The small railroad community of Philadelphia, about three miles northeast of downtown Rockingham, was completely obliterated, with one observer noting that only “fragments remained of the houses and cabins.” At least 25 homes were razed to their foundations, their debris scattered over large areas. At least 15 residents of Philadelphia were killed in the storm.

In total, multiple waves of tornadoes scoured at least ten states across the Midwest and Southeast. Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia were all impacted by tornadoes and destructive winds. The enigma, however, begins with the final number of tornadoes — although the official number ranges from 47 to 60, the Enigma Outbreak may actually have been among the largest in history. The extent of tornado-related damage is uncertain, but is suspected to have been several million dollars, the equivalent of perhaps $100 million today. More than 10,000 structures were destroyed. The final death toll, too, is a complete mystery. While the conservative estimate is 178 — a terrible toll in its own right — many estimates have placed the final number as high as 1,200. A further 2,500 may have been injured during the outbreak. The system produced more than 37 significant tornadoes (F2 – F5) during its 15-hour duration, ranking it still among the most violent outbreaks on record.

Map of all reported tornadoes during the Enigma Outbreak. Note that the northernmost tornado tracks may actually have been downburst damage. It is likely that there were many more tornadoes that simply went unreported, and some tracks may have been tornado families.

 

In the days leading up to the event, despite a recently enacted ban on the word “tornado” and a halt to nearly all research and forecasting, an intrepid scientist named John P. Finley worked diligently to record surface and atmospheric data and attempt to piece together the puzzle of tornado outbreaks. Finley developed meticulous tornado charts to track what he believed to be the most significant factors in tornado formation, including temperatures, dewpoints, dewpoint depression, wind direction and observed conditions. In his chart for the morning of February 19, seen below, he noted what he believed to be one of the most important indications of a tornado outbreak. A bulge of dry air, now referred to as a dryline bulge, was being pulled from Texas and Louisiana and forced into an area of warm, moist air overlaying Alabama and Georgia by strong easterly mid-level winds. This phenomenon is still used today to diagnose an enhanced tornado threat.

“Tornado chart” created by John P. Finley on the morning of February 19. Dewpoint isolines indicate a bulge of dry air from Louisiana cutting into the existing tongue of moist air over Alabama and Georgia, boosted by a strong southerly low-level jet. Added arrows represent dry air intrusion (orange) and moist air surge (green).

 

Because of the extremely dynamic nature of the storm system in place, a range of severe weather effects were experienced over a vast swath of the eastern United States. The upper Midwest was gripped by an intense blizzard, with gale-force winds and snowfall rates exceeding one to two inches per hour in some areas. Much of the Ohio Valley experienced the violent winds and torrential rains of a derecho, with widespread and severe non-tornadic wind damage. Thousands of trees were “prostrated by the extreme wind,” and telegraph communications were cut off for several days. Across the Ohio Valley, the Ohio River and its many tributaries had already spilled over their banks. The additional rainfall from the storms of the 19th and 20th led to flooding which exceeded all records. Homes were swept away by deadly floods in Louisville, Kentucky; Jeffersonville, Indiana; and many other towns along the Ohio and its tributaries. At Union Point in Greene County, Georgia, hail fell in such volume that the ground was covered to a depth of three inches.

Though the true extent of the Enigma Outbreak have been lost to the ravages of time, it still stands among the most widespread and violent tornado outbreaks in history. The tornado which struck Philadelphia and Rockingham remains the deadliest tornado in the history of North Carolina. Limited newspaper resources and shoddy reporting also makes it difficult to place this outbreak historically. Damages and deaths in rural areas were very poorly reported, and the deaths of African-Americans were not counted nor recorded. Given the large African-American population in the affected areas, it’s likely the death toll was much larger than the officially accepted number. The nickname is certainly well-deserved, and the many mysteries of the Enigma Outbreak will continue to draw intrigue well into the future.

May 27, 1997 — The Jarrell, Texas Tornado

 [Click photos to view larger versions.]

Nestled in the Blackland Prairies at the edge of Central Texas’ Hill Country lies the small community of Jarrell. It’s a land of contrasts, with a small-but-developing town center carved into the low, rolling hills and patchy farmland. Clumps of Indian paintbrush and Texas bluebonnet provide blotches of color against the muted greens and browns of shortgrass and crop fields. A sharp, black, six-lane ribbon of asphalt bisects the town, carrying drivers between the metropolitan areas of Dallas, Waco and Austin.

If the town of Jarrell is divided by that flat, sun-baked stretch of Interstate 35, so too are its people. To the east of the interstate, the march of progress has taken hold full-force. A brand new water tower glints in the midday sun, rising more than 200 feet above its surroundings. Newly elected mayor Dewey Hulme talks excitedly about his plans for a reinvigorated Jarrell, one in which the new water tower and a sprawling 46-acre town center — planned out on a vast 153-acre parcel of land near the interstate — will begin to attract the kind of commercial and residential growth that could transform the town.

To the west of I-35, there is no water tower. There are no freshly built developments and new businesses. There is no talk of transformation. Instead, there is the stark land surrounding County Road 305. There is a park with a small community center, flanked by two emerald-green baseball fields. There is a simple memorial plaque, white lettering etched into sepia-toned granite, and a semicircular entrance ringed by trees – 27 of them. Most of all, there is the ever-present memory of the day nature conspired to wipe 50 homes and 27 of Jarrell’s mothers, fathers, children, friends and neighbors from the face of the Earth.

The Jarrell Memorial Park, with several of the 27 trees planted to honor tornado victims.