The Wind From Hell

“From the far north they heard a low wail of the wind. They could see where the long grass bowed in waves before the coming storm. There now came a sharp whistling in the air from the south and as they turned their eyes that way, they saw ripples in the grass coming from that direction also. The north and south winds met where the house stood and made it the exact center of the cyclone. In the middle of the cyclone, the air is generally still, but the great pressure of the wind on every side of the house raised it higher and higher until it was at the very top of the cyclone and there it was carried miles and miles away as easily as you could carry a feather.”

“It was very dark all around as the wind howled horribly around her and the wind shrieked so loudly all about her that she nearly became deaf. She was awakened by a shock so sudden and severe that she might have been hurt. She noticed that the house was no longer moving, nor was it dark; for bright sunshine came in the window, flooding the little room.”

“The girl looked outside and said to her dog; “Toto, I don’t think that we are in Kansas anymore.’”

This is the description by L. Frank Baum of the tornado in his classic The Wizard of Oz that blew Dorothy and Toto to the land of Oz. This is perhaps the most famous tornado in history. While the story is pure fantasy, the experience is real. L. Frank Baum grew up on the prairies of the Midwest and it is believed that he was no stranger to tornadoes. While the story is pure fiction the description of the tornado is based on fact and experience.

But tornadoes are real and can be deadly as well as fascinating. Last month another author wrote about the June 8 1953 tornado that hit the west side of Cleveland and killed nine people. Although I was just a young child then, I do remember it a little. What I remember was the clouds becoming an eerie shade of a dark gray and a little green. My father ordered my mother to take us kids downstairs and to hide under the basement stairs.

That tornado didn’t hit our home in Parma, but it came close. My father spent the war years stationed in Enid Oklahoma which is in the heart of “tornado alley” and knew the signs. That June 1953 tornado was part of a major tornado outbreak that day and the next day. That evening another tornado in Flint Michigan killed 115 people and the next day that same storm system spawned a tornado that killed 90 people in Worcester Massachusetts.

Tornadoes are no stranger to Ohio and very often tornadoes in Ohio can be deadly. The deadliest tornado in Ohio’s recorded history was the Lorain tornado on June 28 1924. It was a hot sultry summer day and my mother remembered that day. Although she was a child about the same age as I was in 1953, she was at a family wedding in Castalia outside Sandusky and she remembers the clouds turning a dark greenish gray like in 1953.

That tornado formed over Sandusky and hit the east end of Sandusky before going out over Lake Erie. It is believed that the storm stayed out over the lake before slamming into downtown Lorain. That tornado killed 78 people, injured over 1000 and left 7000 people homeless. The highest death toll was when the tornado destroyed the Palace Theatre during a Saturday matinee. A lot of the dead were children.

Many years later, going though some old photos from my parents, I came across photos of the tornado damage in Lorain taken by my grandfather. I donated them to the Lorain Historical Society and they were grateful for those old photos.

Almost fifty years later, on April 3 1974 another deadly tornado hit the city of Xenia Ohio near Dayton. This was one of 148 tornadoes spawned that day in the “super outbreak” in thirteen states killing 315 people including 36 in Xenia. That Xenia tornado, rated on the Fugiita scale as an EF5 was the deadliest single tornado of that outbreak.

There have been other deadly tornado outbreaks in Ohio that have affected northeastern Ohio. Another deadly tornado outbreak hit on Palm Sunday, April 11, 1965. This was the deadliest tornado outbreak until the “super outbreak” nine years later. It is the second deadliest tornado outbreak in Ohio behind the Lorain tornado. Northwestern Ohio and Toledo were the hardest hit in Ohio. The tornadoes that hit Ohio came after sunset. The community of Pittsfield in Lorain County south of Oberlin was literally wiped off the map. Seven Pittsfield residents were killed. The path of this tornado carried it to Strongsville where it damaged some houses before lifting up in the clouds.

Another deadly tornado outbreak in Ohio was on May 31 1985. This tornado outbreak occurred in the northeastern part of Ohio in the Warren – Youngstown area. The most powerful tornado of this outbreak was an EF 5 monster that formed in Portage County and cut a forty seven mile path through Newton Falls, Niles and Hubbard before crossing into Pennsylvania. On this day a total of 43 tornadoes tore through Ohio and Pennsylvania killing 89 people, 76 in Pennsylvania. This outbreak is the deadliest in Pennsylvania’s history.

Source material for this column came from the book Thunder in the Heartland  by Thomas W Schmidlin and Jeanne Applehans Schmidlin published by the Kent State University Press

This topic will continue next month due to the space restrictions.