1974 Super Outbreak
April 4, 2024 5:21 AM Subscribe
On April 3 and 4, 1974, thunderstorms spawned more
than 100 tornadoes, killing
more than 300 and injuring another 6000. Most fatalities occurred in
small towns from Guin
and Tanner, Alabama to Monticello,
Indiana and the
small city of Xenia,
Ohio. The Super
Outbreak became the impetus for improved
weather forecasting, improved
emergency notification, and comprehensive
federal response.
Meteorologists in 1974 had little computing power to assist them, depending on analog barographs and hand-drawn radar overlays to track developing storms. When hook echoes indicated rotational thunderstorms, local offices would inform threatened cities and towns by telephone. Some, like Louisville and Cincinnati, had ample warning and civil defense sirens and news helicopters to inform residents to take shelter. Others, like Brandenburg, Kentucky, had little or no warning and suffered tragic loss of life.
In response, the weather radio network was expanded from 66 stations in 1974 to more than 300 by 1979. Doppler radar was studied and found to be a clear improvement, notably increasing tornado warning time tenfold to an average of twenty minutes. NOAA authorized new networked, computerized radar stations known as NEXRAD to replace the old tech.
Dr. Ted Fujita mapped and investigated the 2000 miles of the tornadoes' paths to learn more about the forces involved. He found evidence of the multiple vortices he had theorized and tracks that had climbed mountains or descended canyons without losing strength. He also found an empirical formula for tornado intensity across the width of the damage swath, critical for actuarial analysis of tornado risk.
Structural damage was analyzed from an engineering perspective, with a particular focus on the vulnerabilities of schools and unreinforced masonry (akin to the 1933 Long Beach earthquake) and the particular fragility of mobile homes necessitating parks to provide a common shelter.
The most extensive damage was in Xenia, where more than 1000 homes and more than 100 businesses were destroyed. Thousands more buildings were damaged, roughly half the city. Recovery was swift but uneven. More than 80% of the housing was restored within a year, but only 40% of the business. Plans for a downtown shopping center fell through (NYT.onion); a more modest commercial Towne Square opened in 1980. Wilberforce, just outside city limits and predominantly Black, was also devastated moments after Xenia but overshadowed.
Bonus links: ABC footage from the first weeks of recovery, civil defense film recounting the outbreak (YT), archive link from the previously
Meteorologists in 1974 had little computing power to assist them, depending on analog barographs and hand-drawn radar overlays to track developing storms. When hook echoes indicated rotational thunderstorms, local offices would inform threatened cities and towns by telephone. Some, like Louisville and Cincinnati, had ample warning and civil defense sirens and news helicopters to inform residents to take shelter. Others, like Brandenburg, Kentucky, had little or no warning and suffered tragic loss of life.
In response, the weather radio network was expanded from 66 stations in 1974 to more than 300 by 1979. Doppler radar was studied and found to be a clear improvement, notably increasing tornado warning time tenfold to an average of twenty minutes. NOAA authorized new networked, computerized radar stations known as NEXRAD to replace the old tech.
Dr. Ted Fujita mapped and investigated the 2000 miles of the tornadoes' paths to learn more about the forces involved. He found evidence of the multiple vortices he had theorized and tracks that had climbed mountains or descended canyons without losing strength. He also found an empirical formula for tornado intensity across the width of the damage swath, critical for actuarial analysis of tornado risk.
Structural damage was analyzed from an engineering perspective, with a particular focus on the vulnerabilities of schools and unreinforced masonry (akin to the 1933 Long Beach earthquake) and the particular fragility of mobile homes necessitating parks to provide a common shelter.
The most extensive damage was in Xenia, where more than 1000 homes and more than 100 businesses were destroyed. Thousands more buildings were damaged, roughly half the city. Recovery was swift but uneven. More than 80% of the housing was restored within a year, but only 40% of the business. Plans for a downtown shopping center fell through (NYT.onion); a more modest commercial Towne Square opened in 1980. Wilberforce, just outside city limits and predominantly Black, was also devastated moments after Xenia but overshadowed.
Bonus links: ABC footage from the first weeks of recovery, civil defense film recounting the outbreak (YT), archive link from the previously
Louisville, KY has never been the same since the tornadoes of '74. Seeing pictures before and after, it's like two different towns.
posted by hairless ape at 5:53 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]
posted by hairless ape at 5:53 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]
Ted Fujita really did change how we see thunderstorms -- and I am constantly surprised at how recent it is; he proved microbursts exist in the late 1970s, before then it was just rumors of weird destruction patterns during big thunderstorms with no explanation. I can only imagine how Wrath of God storms looked, even during the 20th century, because there would just be mass destruction, no explanation, no warning.
(He has a connection to my hometown of Fargo North Dakota: he developed his Fujita scale of tornadoes after analyzing the 1957 tornado that wiped a stripe of destruction straight through the largest city in North Dakota; the Fujita scale, too, is a 1970s innovation)
posted by AzraelBrown at 5:58 AM on April 4 [4 favorites]
(He has a connection to my hometown of Fargo North Dakota: he developed his Fujita scale of tornadoes after analyzing the 1957 tornado that wiped a stripe of destruction straight through the largest city in North Dakota; the Fujita scale, too, is a 1970s innovation)
posted by AzraelBrown at 5:58 AM on April 4 [4 favorites]
I grew up not far away, and "Xenia" was a byword my whole childhood for tragedy…
Growing up in Indiana, we long had a similar touchstone…Palm Sunday. Tornadoes are just plain evil.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:08 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]
Growing up in Indiana, we long had a similar touchstone…Palm Sunday. Tornadoes are just plain evil.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:08 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]
Wow. I was a young-ish reporter 25 years ago working in Ohio and wrote part of our newspaper's package of stories on the anniversary of the Xenia tornado. That thing was a monster, as this picture shows. Nearby Wright State University has an archive of photos of the aftermath from one of the local papers, and the devastation is unreal.
The story I did focused on why the damage was so severe. A local official told me that most of the homes were "slab construction" (iirc, probably mis-remembering the term), basically houses sitting on top of slabs with no real anchoring to the ground. I remember the analogy much better-- the tornado just swept them aside like an enormous child playing with blocks.
I did a computer analysis of the county's tax assessment database, which includes the style of construction, and it showed that hundreds of the demolished Xenia homes were rebuilt in the same manner. That was surprising.
Right around that time, ~1999, an F1 tornado came through the town, same SW to NE direction but the path was a little to the north. It swept across the fairgrounds and did some damage to fairground buildings. My wife was working right there, doing agriculture outreach for Ohio State, and sheltered as it came through. Her coworkers, many of whom remembered the 1974 storm, were terrified.
Terrific post, backwoods!
posted by martin q blank at 6:32 AM on April 4 [4 favorites]
The story I did focused on why the damage was so severe. A local official told me that most of the homes were "slab construction" (iirc, probably mis-remembering the term), basically houses sitting on top of slabs with no real anchoring to the ground. I remember the analogy much better-- the tornado just swept them aside like an enormous child playing with blocks.
I did a computer analysis of the county's tax assessment database, which includes the style of construction, and it showed that hundreds of the demolished Xenia homes were rebuilt in the same manner. That was surprising.
Right around that time, ~1999, an F1 tornado came through the town, same SW to NE direction but the path was a little to the north. It swept across the fairgrounds and did some damage to fairground buildings. My wife was working right there, doing agriculture outreach for Ohio State, and sheltered as it came through. Her coworkers, many of whom remembered the 1974 storm, were terrified.
Terrific post, backwoods!
posted by martin q blank at 6:32 AM on April 4 [4 favorites]
The link to the audio mentioned above doesn’t seem to be active anymore. I found what sounds like the same audio uploaded to YouTube (with photos from the tornado.)
posted by profreader at 7:09 AM on April 4 [4 favorites]
posted by profreader at 7:09 AM on April 4 [4 favorites]
A local official told me that most of the homes were "slab construction"
In a large enough tornado, it doesn't really make any difference. "Slab construction" is correct, as in a concrete slab or platform is built, and then the home is build on top of that. The house is bolted to the slab, but windshear forces in a direct tornado hit render that irrelevant. A more modern invention is 'hurricane ties' for the roof, which are metal plates which tie the roof to the frame of the house. The roof is far more likely to be torn off than the entire house swept off it's slab, especially if not directly in the path of a tornado.
A "slab" is in contrast to a basement, where a big hole is dug and a basement is built. The decision has mostly to do with land pricing in the local area, but the freeze line (how deep the ground freezes) and likelihood of tornadoes are also taken into account.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:37 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]
In a large enough tornado, it doesn't really make any difference. "Slab construction" is correct, as in a concrete slab or platform is built, and then the home is build on top of that. The house is bolted to the slab, but windshear forces in a direct tornado hit render that irrelevant. A more modern invention is 'hurricane ties' for the roof, which are metal plates which tie the roof to the frame of the house. The roof is far more likely to be torn off than the entire house swept off it's slab, especially if not directly in the path of a tornado.
A "slab" is in contrast to a basement, where a big hole is dug and a basement is built. The decision has mostly to do with land pricing in the local area, but the freeze line (how deep the ground freezes) and likelihood of tornadoes are also taken into account.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:37 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]
The 2011 super outbreak overlapped some of the same ground, 37 years later. I was working in the NSSTC at the time. People in the office were talking about the NWS personnel and assorted Weather Nerds on the roof of the building. We later joked that if the tornado(es) had hit the building it would have crippled the NWS. (I don't think that's actually true but it was gallows-humor-funny at the time.)
The place I was renting was still standing, but a few miles north it looked like entire neighborhoods had been flattened by artillery. Nothing but bare foundations and loose rubble. A lot of houses didn't even have part of a single wall still standing. Spent a weekend moving the remains of peoples' homes to the road so the city could collect the debris. It's hard to imagine getting there first and looking for survivors in... that.
The power was out for (IIRC) a couple weeks in a lot of places (including mine and most of my friends'). I think they shut down Brown's Ferry as a precaution. We were relatively pleased it didn't get hit. Cell phone coverage started to get spotty once the generators the towers were running on ran out of gas. Gas stations were dry, but I still had a half tank and eventually drove back down to my parents' for a couple days. One of the upsides compared to a hurricane was that the roads were easier to clear and other places nearby still had power.
On the trip down highway 431 I saw entire swaths of trees that had been blown down. You could drive for a few miles and things looked normal, then for a few miles it was just... fields full of trees that had been torn out by the roots like weeds.
It took years for some of the area to recover. You never had to go far to be reminded that it could (eventually would) happen again.
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 7:41 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]
The place I was renting was still standing, but a few miles north it looked like entire neighborhoods had been flattened by artillery. Nothing but bare foundations and loose rubble. A lot of houses didn't even have part of a single wall still standing. Spent a weekend moving the remains of peoples' homes to the road so the city could collect the debris. It's hard to imagine getting there first and looking for survivors in... that.
The power was out for (IIRC) a couple weeks in a lot of places (including mine and most of my friends'). I think they shut down Brown's Ferry as a precaution. We were relatively pleased it didn't get hit. Cell phone coverage started to get spotty once the generators the towers were running on ran out of gas. Gas stations were dry, but I still had a half tank and eventually drove back down to my parents' for a couple days. One of the upsides compared to a hurricane was that the roads were easier to clear and other places nearby still had power.
On the trip down highway 431 I saw entire swaths of trees that had been blown down. You could drive for a few miles and things looked normal, then for a few miles it was just... fields full of trees that had been torn out by the roots like weeds.
It took years for some of the area to recover. You never had to go far to be reminded that it could (eventually would) happen again.
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 7:41 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]
I moved to Xenia in 1977, in time for my sophomore year of high school and the opening of the new school building that replaced the high school that had been destroyed. High school and junior high students had been sharing one junior high school that had been left standing. They went in shifts, with one shift getting a whole school day in the mornings, and the other shift getting their school day in the afternoons.
The town has only about 25,000 people, but its newspaper got a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the tornado.
I don’t know whether this has changed, but when I lived there, Xenia was sometimes called “Windy City”.
posted by NotLost at 8:35 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]
The town has only about 25,000 people, but its newspaper got a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the tornado.
I don’t know whether this has changed, but when I lived there, Xenia was sometimes called “Windy City”.
posted by NotLost at 8:35 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]
I often think of the 1979 Wichita Falls tornado which killed 42 people, partly because it inspired an album by Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays which is my favorite ambient music.
posted by neuron at 8:59 AM on April 4 [3 favorites]
posted by neuron at 8:59 AM on April 4 [3 favorites]
Double post.
(I kid, I kid. Almost all the links are dead on that one at this point, so it's good to have a new collection. Here's the Wayback Machine's version of the main website that my 2003 post was based around.)
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:23 PM on April 4
(I kid, I kid. Almost all the links are dead on that one at this point, so it's good to have a new collection. Here's the Wayback Machine's version of the main website that my 2003 post was based around.)
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:23 PM on April 4
Oh and now I see that you did link to it, but that your collection of links was so extensive that I missed it at the very end. I'll just go hide in the southwest corner of my basement now.
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:25 PM on April 4
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:25 PM on April 4
Youtube suggested to me The Day the Clock Stopped: 50 years after the 1974 Xenia tornado - this includes interviews with survivors. Most of them recall praying in the seconds the tornado approached. I'm an atheist but an approaching F5 tornado would sure test the strength of my non belief. One witness describes being at the school and choosing, on a whim to shelter somewhere other than on the school stage - shortly before the tornado deposited two school buses on that spot.
posted by rongorongo at 10:47 PM on April 4 [1 favorite]
posted by rongorongo at 10:47 PM on April 4 [1 favorite]
One of the upsides compared to a hurricane was that the roads were easier to clear and other places nearby still had power.
I have long been much less bothered by tornadoes than hurricanes for a similar reason. Assuming you survive without major injury and you're able-bodied you can walk out of the damage path of even the largest tornado in at most a few hours and find shelter and supplies. Not so with hurricanes.
Another thing I hate about hurricanes is the days of anticipation. Will it hit, won't it? Is it going to weaken? It's it just going to be someone else's problem this time? Ugh. My brain is much better wired for dealing with immediate threats. Not to mention that they're not even much of a threat at the individual level. I lived in tornado alley for 35 years and only two or three times did a tornado strike within 25 miles of my location. In every case a relatively minor one. Sat out plenty of warnings in the bathroom, though.
Tornadoes are a much bigger risk at the population level, much like car crashes. High consequence, low probability. Unless you live in the cursed city of Moore, Oklahoma, which is apparently located just in the exact spot on God's armchair where He likes to drum his fingers when He is bored. He really should be more careful about crushing us puny humans.
posted by wierdo at 11:46 AM on April 5 [2 favorites]
I have long been much less bothered by tornadoes than hurricanes for a similar reason. Assuming you survive without major injury and you're able-bodied you can walk out of the damage path of even the largest tornado in at most a few hours and find shelter and supplies. Not so with hurricanes.
Another thing I hate about hurricanes is the days of anticipation. Will it hit, won't it? Is it going to weaken? It's it just going to be someone else's problem this time? Ugh. My brain is much better wired for dealing with immediate threats. Not to mention that they're not even much of a threat at the individual level. I lived in tornado alley for 35 years and only two or three times did a tornado strike within 25 miles of my location. In every case a relatively minor one. Sat out plenty of warnings in the bathroom, though.
Tornadoes are a much bigger risk at the population level, much like car crashes. High consequence, low probability. Unless you live in the cursed city of Moore, Oklahoma, which is apparently located just in the exact spot on God's armchair where He likes to drum his fingers when He is bored. He really should be more careful about crushing us puny humans.
posted by wierdo at 11:46 AM on April 5 [2 favorites]
Mod note: [btw, this terrific post has been added to the sidebar and Best Of blog!]
posted by taz (staff) at 3:48 AM on April 6 [1 favorite]
posted by taz (staff) at 3:48 AM on April 6 [1 favorite]
“The Most Important day in Tornado Science History - April 3, 1974” [41:17]—weatherbox, 25 March 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 5:42 AM on April 6
posted by ob1quixote at 5:42 AM on April 6
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If you are not in a part of the world where you get such storms, here is an audio recording of the Xenia tornado.
Flagged as fantastic, backwoods; wow.
posted by minervous at 5:47 AM on April 4 [4 favorites]