by Robert
(Tullahoma, TN)
I live in Tennessee on the very tip of Coffee and Franklin county. We are prone to tornados. There are no certain times of the year. They happen all months of the year. Usually less during June – August. Where most people think winter is out of the question, a lot of our biggest storm fronts move through during February.
I remember the super outbreak of 1974. I was 8 years old and attending elementary school. It seems like there were 3 days of tornados. We really didn’t have any warning systems and there wasn’t such a thing as a “tornado warning” but we all knew what tornados were and knew what to watch out for.
April 1974 was the only time I really remember it being absolutely pitch black for most of the day. So black outside that all the street lights were on. We had tornado drills a lot in school but this time we just thought it was an extended drill. It seemed like we were in that hall for hours. Nobody was allowed to leave. Parents were wanting to pick their kids up but couldn’t. The school was on lock down.
Being young kids, we certainly couldn’t just stay in “duck and cover” mode for long. The giggling and the whispering starts. The principle walked up and down the hall with a paddle and anybody that was making noise got a lick. Back then I thought it was a bit much, but now I can certainly see that he was probably terrified out of his wits being responsible for hundreds of kids lives.
There is some documentation missing about that 1974 run of tornados. There was an F5 in Estill Springs and I have only seen it listed a time or two. It didn’t strike us being in Tullahoma but pretty darn close.
My father worked shifts at the air force base. When he was on 3rd shift he would sleep during the day and then get up at night about the time we were asleep to shower and get ready for work. To help buffer this noise, Mother bought fans for our rooms. The fan noise would drown out all the shuffling in the hall and noise from the shower. So we got used to this white noise to which I can’t sleep without to this day.
In the middle of the night my fan cut off. The wind was roaring outside and I got up to see what was going on. I went to the front door and opened the wooden door and saw the trees laying on the ground. I went to touch the latch on the storm door and it just ripped off the hinges and disappeared. A hand grabbed me by the collar before getting sucked out of the house. My Dad slammed the front door and threw us all under matresses in the hall.
Fortunately it did not hit us but what terrified my mother was me telling her that I saw a giant upside down ice cream cone in the sky. It was that close. The next day we went riding around and it hit mostly wooded areas that were completely obliterated. I remember seeing a cow pinned in between 2 trees in the middle of all this rubble.
The night before that my parents went to a cottilion at the Lion’s club which was on the other side of town. My sister was at home baby sitting me. A very bad storm with tons of lightening set in and the wind started to howl. Lightening struck the TV antenna on the neighbors house and caught their house on fire.
My sister called the Lion’s Club and told my mother she needed to get home that the weather was bad and she was scared. Across town nothing was happening so my Mother chewed her out and told her to grow up and did not come home. We called my aunt and she came over.
As my parents were driving home it hit. My cousin was also driving down highway 55 when it hit. It struck the armory and leveled the buildings in the city park. It picked my cousin’s car up and spun it around setting it down across the median of a 4 lane highway into oncoming traffic. That was what I remember about 1974.
There’s been many close calls in town and I’ve been in the closet hearing the roaring and hearing the roof start to shake thinking, “This is it!” Most of the time they are jumpers. Our elevation is the highest and once they hit that ridge – they jump.
Again as a little boy we were visiting a friend in Cowan TN which is right up next to the Appalachian Mountains. One came over the mountain and down in behind the field in behind the house. We all ran to the basement and watched out the basement windows. It appeared to be sideways – not straight up and down. As a child I thought that was weird.
Murfreesboro gets a lot of tornados and I was driving down I-24 one day and one touched down close to the interstate. It looked like it was standing still so I knew it was heading straight for me. The only place to get off of the road was a truck stop with a gravel parking lot. I knew I didn’t need to be in the car and tried to run inside but the gravel and dust was so intense from the wind I didn’t make it. I crouched down in a phone booth on the opposite side of the building the tornado was coming from. Can’t remember what year that was.
I was there for the November 1989 tornado in Huntsville that hit Golf Road at rush hour. I was up on the north Parkway shopping at a used record store with a huge plate glass window. I made my purchase and was walking out to the car and saw that familiar black green low rolling cloud. The man from the store ran out and grabbed me and snatched me back in the building. I remember saying, “I don’t wanna be in here with all this glass!” You could feel the ground shake from that one. The roar was just deafening. I think it was an F4.
It started at the Arsanal and cut right across Memorial Parkway which is the “interstate” of Huntsville. Heavily traveled and right at rush hour. It flipped and threw cars all over the place. Many, many people died and were trapping in their cars. It hit an apartment complex, church and small medical hospital and roared up the side of the mountain and back down the other side of the mountain destroying a school. So don’t let anybody ever tell you that tornados can’t go over mountains!
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People don’t understand what a tornado is like? WINDY! LOL! I’ve been in a few other ones than those. You get used to them. You take the proper precautions and you watch the sky. People are starting to understand them better. The damage comes from being above ground. The wind velocities get stronger the higher up you are. It’s the flying debris and being an idiot that will get you killed. STAY LOW!! AS LOW AS YOU CAN!! Most people think the wind blows in one direction. WRONG! It swirls around just like the tornado in all directions. And just because you don’t see a funnel doesn’t mean one isn’t on the ground. The dark color comes from the debris. Some may not even touch the ground fully but can still take out a house. You may see one funnel a safe distance away but it can spawn several different funnels at the same time and one may drop right on your head. Don’t stand in the yard watching it!
Weather reports give you warnings but most of the time nothing happens so consequently people really don’t listen to those warnings and take shelter immediately unless the hear, “ON THE GROUND – TORNADO ON THE GROUND”. It’s like crying wolf. There may be rotation high in the clouds on radar but we see nothing on the ground and it passes over without incident. Sirens are going off so everybody goes outside to see if the signs are there. That’s human nature. But if you see rotation in those clouds – get your happy fanny back inside and to a safe place!
A lot of times it will rain first and most always hail. Usually it’s a warmer, muggier, thicker feeling day. Low pressure. If you live in the south then you’ll know what I’m talking about. The sky will take on a yellowish/greenish/blackish look. We always say, “Look for the green.” If the sky is green – RUN!
It’s not always low hanging rolling clouds either. They can look like normal thunderstorm clouds. But the bad ones are the really low clouds. Those are your F4’s and F5’s. The clouds are so low you can almost touch them. Black black clouds with a green tint to them. The smell of the air changes. Lots of thinner clouds underneath the wall cloud moving extremely fast and in all directions. That spells danger.
After the rain and hail it gets deathly quiet. Absolutely still. No birds chirping, no wind….just still. The air is very heavy then WHAMMO! When it’s been storming like hell and then all of a sudden it gets quiet? Head for the basement!
From a distance it sounds like hissing wind or a waterfall but as it gets closer the roar sets in. That’s the only way to describe it as a roar. No tape recorder or movie camera can capture that roar. You only get a hint of what it sounds like. You are screaming at each other to hear over it.
It vibrates the ground. Then there’s all the cracking and crashing sounds of buildings being ripped apart and trees snapping all mixed in with that roar. Some people say it sounds like a freight train or a jet plane. Yeah, that’s pretty close. Jet plane would be more accurate as far as volume is concerned but the rumble of a train describes the frequency of the roar better. So combine the too. But its about as loud as standing next to a jet taking off at full throttle or louder.
Then the pressure changes and your ears feel like they are going to explode. After it passes….quiet again. Blue skies most of the time. Then you are left to pick up the pieces and start your life over again with nothing.
