Terrible Tuesday - April 10, 1979

I experienced and survived one of the most powerful tornadoes in history, basically an F4 classified tornado, just one less than the maximum. April 10, 1979, a date I shall never forget. It was spring break and my friend, Lyn Kelly (see his interview about the 30th Anniversary below), and I went to the mall in Wichita Falls, TX to watch Superman the Movie. Thereafter, we bought a box of “Kryptonite Rocks”, really just quartz rocks covered in glow-in-the-dark paint. We proceeded to my house, played with the rocks and discussed the movie. When my friend left, my uncle asked if I cared to join him to visit my dad, who was working some miles away in Burkburnett, TX. I rode back home with my dad, and we could already see the signs in the sky, thunderclouds yes, but stronger, different.

We stood for a while outside our apartment until the sirens began to wail, at which point we took cover in our downstairs half-bath, with me squeezed between the toilet and wall and my parents covering me. The sound of the wind was like nothing I have heard before or since. At once there was a lull and my father opened the door to the bathroom, but my mother quickly called him back, and it was for the best because this tornado, which was about a mile wide, apparently had a calm eye to it. This is a storm cell that began as three separate tornadoes which coalesced into one as it laid waste to our fair city. Everyone who experienced this storm or others like it have a story, and this is but one.

We spent the evening trying to ensure our family members were alive and well, and my father sat vigil overnight with his pistol in fear of thieves; indeed someone did attempt to pry open the plywood that covered the erstwhile sliding-glass door opening, my father assured him it would be unwise to continue.

To this day, I still carry a guarded fascination for this power of Nature. I have obtained an uncanny ability to spot weather that can result in a tornado, not as a meteorologist might, but more through intuition. I experienced two such occasions living here in the Seattle area. One, I mentioned to others, ‘this is exactly what the sky looked like before the tornado, and sure enough, a small tornado touched down in a school yard in West Seattle. The other was when I was commuting into the Seattle city center by bus while consulting, and I saw the same thing over North Seattle, except this time, I saw the funnel cloud (which luckily never touched down). No one on the bus was any the wiser until I pointed it out, and even then skepticism ran high; luckily the evening weather report redeemed me. Though that which we see here in the Northwest are almost always cold core funnels, which are typically harmless. It just shows that even here in Seattle with such a different weather pattern to the plains can still, on occasion, produce weather conducive of tornadic activity.


See the wikipedia article about not only our tornado, but all the tornados this system spawned here, you may also be interested in the incredible photos and other info on the NOAA site. Below is a documentary made about Terrible Tuesday and placed on MySpace, in this documentary, there is a lady named, Norma Wright, who owned a gift shop called The Treasure Cove, I knew her, it was in the village across the street from us; I frequently traded with her, buying gifts for my parents.

Lyn Kelly Speaking of the Tornado on it's 30th Anniversary



Terrible Tuesday - April 10, 1979