Spring is here. So are the tornadoes
The color of the sky as black clouds tumbled in front of it was green — a bright crayon green. I was hearing thunder in the distance as my mother was calling for me to come in. At 12 years old, I was not listening to my mother. I was interested in that green sky. Mom came out and escorted me inside, telling me it was dangerous. Bad weather was coming.
This was my first experience with what tornadoes can do. We lived at Schilling Air Force Base close to Salina, Kansas, in the late 1950s. The wind started blowing so hard and the rain was coming down in sheets. The wind forced the rain through the frames of the plate glass windows. My sister, mom, and I grabbed towels to try to staunch the flood of water. I’d never seen anything like it.
We heard such a huge roar, but none of us knew we should have been afraid. It was only later that we learned a tornado had swept over the rooftops of the base housing and took quite a few television antennas. Cable and satellite dishes were several years away. Our antenna was spared.
The little town of El Dorado, Kansas, was devastated. The next day, we all went over to help the people there. I’ll never forget the destruction, and the oddities of seeing wheat driven into wooden fence posts by the wind and a refrigerator twisted around the top of a tree. Although it fascinated me, it also scared me. It didn’t seem possible that a weather event could cause so much damage. And 13 people had been killed.
Moving forward in time, it was April 3, 1974. By then, I had been living in Northwest Georgia, married, and expecting our first child. My mom and dad had come for a visit from East Tennessee and as we were walking in the pasture next to our house, I noticed how warm it was and that a rather hot wind was whipping up. It made me uneasy. Being eight months pregnant didn’t help.
The weather announcers had been direly predicting tornadoes. It appeared to be shaping up to become a bad tornado outbreak. Mom and Dad decided to stay the night rather than risk driving in bad storms. We were out in the front yard watching the worst looking clouds I had seen since living in Kansas. Our eyes were watching an exceptionally evil looking cloud right over Resaca. I remember my dad saying, “Boy, I feel sorry for those folks over that way.”
A tornado came out of that menacing cloud and landed on top of a brick home. Almost an entire family was wiped out except for a 9-year-old boy. In all, nine people were killed in this area. When Mom and Dad headed home, they drove through many areas of destruction with homes, school, and businesses destroyed.
April 3, 1974, will always be known as “The Night of the Tornadoes.” The squall line of horrific storms cut a path through the middle of the United States from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. Over 300 people lost their lives and the small city of Xenia, Ohio, was destroyed.
On April 1, 1977, our second baby, a boy we named Heath, was due for his one month check-up. It was rainy and miserable. Bill was at home from work. He was going to go with me for Heath’s appointment, but we both decided to reschedule. We didn’t want to get Heath out in such bad weather.
Later in the morning, some blueblack clouds started boiling up behind my mother-in-law’s house. They were dangerous looking. Although we usually went up to Mother’s when menacing clouds appeared, no severe weather was predicted. We decided to stay home.
As the clouds came closer, I saw one flash of lightning and a heard a huge clap of thunder. The wind rose and I grabbed up Heath and headed for the bedroom closet. Bill had opened the front door and said something like he’d never seen the wind blow like that.
As I looked out the bedroom window, I saw cedar trees up in the air — and Bill saw Heather’s tricycle in the air as he slammed the door shut. I wasn’t sure we would survive.
But we did with only a bit of damage to our porch. The late Guy Sharpe, a renowned weatherman, believed it was a tornado, but it was never confirmed. Nonetheless, it made Bill a believer in the reality of the destructive force of a tornado and left little Heath traumatized.
Spring is here. So are the tornadoes. Use common sense. Be aware. Take precautions. Be safe.