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

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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.

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.

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.

• • •

May 22, 2011 — The Joplin Tornado

[Note: Click photos to see larger versions.]

“Get the sirens going, get the sirens going, I’m telling you!”

The sense of urgency, bordering on panic, was palpable. The brilliant blue springtime skies had become a malevolent, roiling mass of charcoal grays and diffuse blue-greens. The murky clouds heaved curtains of rain and a spattering of hail as storm chaser Jeff Piotrowski pulled alongside a police cruiser near Seventh Street and Black Cat Road on the south side of Joplin, Missouri. The doppler radar inside Jeff’s vehicle indicated an extremely intense circulation just minutes from town, but one look to the southwest left no doubt. Lowering from the sky to engulf the horizon was a massive, billowing cone of clouds. A scattering of debris soon followed, prompting Piotrowski to issue his desperate plea. By the time the sirens wailed to life, the single deadliest tornado in more than six decades had already begun its path of devastation.

• • •

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.