The 1974 "Super Outbreak"
In 1974 on April the 3rd an extremely devastating event of Tornadoes struck in over 13 states in the Midwest, Lower Mississippi Valley, and Southeast. It was recorded that 148 tornadoes hit over a 15 hour time period across 13 states creating havoc everywhere. The event was called the "Super Outbreak". It cost over billions of dollars for the damage the tornadoes had done.
It was 15 hours long and the destruction it caused was beyond extreme. 330 people were killed in during the Tornadoes and 5,484 people were injured.
The National Weather Service forecasters have said that the weather conditions leading up to it was bad and they could tell that something bad was going to happen soon but they didn't know it was be as bad as it was. On April the 2nd, their was a lot of cold, dry air over Canada and Mississippi and also a lot of warm, moist air coming from the Gulf of Mexico. There was winds at up to 225 kilometres per hour. They knew that the conditions meant for a fierce storm but they weren't sure exactly of its details and information about it. At that time the forecasters could only see green circles with their radars and could only confirm the Tornadoes when they could actually see it. As the weather conditions merged, the difference between the cold and warm fronts caused, as warm air does, to rise. The winds became to circle and then it all created tornadoes.
The weather during the event was just thunderstorms everywhere and huge tornadoes not that far away from each other. There was also a hailstorm, just to make things worse. The people who experienced the tornadoes were never able to recover from it mentally just like Jeff Louderback who was just 5 at the time, and he remembers hiding in his house with the fearful memories remaining decades later. He described it his experience with this story. "Mum and Dad covered me, shielding my body from flying bricks and shattered glass. The deafening wind sounded like a team of fighter jets. I saw bedroom doors slamming against the wall before flying off their hinges. The roof ripped off, and the walls around us crumbled. Between my sobs, I could hear Dad praying for our protection."
The most powerful tornado of the Super Outbreak consisted of three separate storms that merged to form a single tornado that landed on a house owned by the Winston family. Debby Winston, 17 at the time, saw a giant black cloud approaching and hid in a closet with her mother and her younger sister just before their house exploded. Debby Winston says that she woke 90 metres from her home with a cut under her eye. She was very lucky as her sister punctured her hip and her mother broke her collar and pelvic bones.
The same tornado was at wind speeds of up to 512 kph so some meteorologists debated after the tornado event that it could be ranked an off-the-chart F6.
There is a Fujita scale, which ranges from an F0, with winds as low as 64 kph, to an F5, with winds that can reach more than 482 kph. As you can see in the table below there were 15 tornadoes rated F0, 37 ranked F1, 31 ranked F2, 35 ranked F3, 23 ranked F4 and 7 ranked F5 being the most dangerous tornadoes.
It was 15 hours long and the destruction it caused was beyond extreme. 330 people were killed in during the Tornadoes and 5,484 people were injured.
The National Weather Service forecasters have said that the weather conditions leading up to it was bad and they could tell that something bad was going to happen soon but they didn't know it was be as bad as it was. On April the 2nd, their was a lot of cold, dry air over Canada and Mississippi and also a lot of warm, moist air coming from the Gulf of Mexico. There was winds at up to 225 kilometres per hour. They knew that the conditions meant for a fierce storm but they weren't sure exactly of its details and information about it. At that time the forecasters could only see green circles with their radars and could only confirm the Tornadoes when they could actually see it. As the weather conditions merged, the difference between the cold and warm fronts caused, as warm air does, to rise. The winds became to circle and then it all created tornadoes.
The weather during the event was just thunderstorms everywhere and huge tornadoes not that far away from each other. There was also a hailstorm, just to make things worse. The people who experienced the tornadoes were never able to recover from it mentally just like Jeff Louderback who was just 5 at the time, and he remembers hiding in his house with the fearful memories remaining decades later. He described it his experience with this story. "Mum and Dad covered me, shielding my body from flying bricks and shattered glass. The deafening wind sounded like a team of fighter jets. I saw bedroom doors slamming against the wall before flying off their hinges. The roof ripped off, and the walls around us crumbled. Between my sobs, I could hear Dad praying for our protection."
The most powerful tornado of the Super Outbreak consisted of three separate storms that merged to form a single tornado that landed on a house owned by the Winston family. Debby Winston, 17 at the time, saw a giant black cloud approaching and hid in a closet with her mother and her younger sister just before their house exploded. Debby Winston says that she woke 90 metres from her home with a cut under her eye. She was very lucky as her sister punctured her hip and her mother broke her collar and pelvic bones.
The same tornado was at wind speeds of up to 512 kph so some meteorologists debated after the tornado event that it could be ranked an off-the-chart F6.
There is a Fujita scale, which ranges from an F0, with winds as low as 64 kph, to an F5, with winds that can reach more than 482 kph. As you can see in the table below there were 15 tornadoes rated F0, 37 ranked F1, 31 ranked F2, 35 ranked F3, 23 ranked F4 and 7 ranked F5 being the most dangerous tornadoes.