A TALE OF TWO TORNADOES
Part I

The National Weather Services has declared October 21st Fall Severe Weather Awareness Day in Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. Historically, November has been an active month for severe weather and tornadoes throughout the country.

Having been through a hurricane, a flood, an earthquake and two tornadoes I take this very seriously. By far, the worst of these experiences were the tornadoes.

I know several people who would love to see a funnel cloud. Not me. Being from Northern Illinois, known as “tornado alley,” I have absolutely no desire to see a funnel cloud. I have never seen one and I hope I never do. That’s wayyyyyy too close for comfort.

The morning of my eighth grade graduation from Carl Sandburg Junior High in Northern Illinois, my mother woke my brother and me up at 6 a.m. She said she had a headache so we should go downstairs. This didn’t make sense to my junior high mind.

I respectfully said, “Since when do we have to go in the basement when you have a headache?”

She said, “Just hurry. We are going to have a tornado.”

I looked outside. It was a beautiful June morning, and was sunny as could be. I didn’t argue with my mother because it was the morning of my graduation from Junior High and I wanted presents, like lots of clothes for high school.

We went downstairs quickly but not before I grabbed my transistor radio (boy, am I dating myself) and the cat. As usual, the cat was useless and showed no signs of fear that bad weather was on the way. I turned on WLS in Chicago, the strongest station we could get. The weather report was clear. There was no mention of tornadoes.

My brother and I sat downstairs, thoroughly convinced our mother had lost it, but then, it got pitch black. The basement was partially underground but we could see a small portion of the swirling dark sky through the windows.

The wind picked up and then we heard it: the freight train sound.

It really does sound like a freight train. We got away from the windows while we watched the exterior wall expand and retract. It was made of brick. The sound was deafening and our ears hurt from the vacuum.

It ended after about 20 seconds. We went upstairs, rather shaken, then ventured outside. Thank God, we were spared. Most neighbors had minor roof damage, but some on the adjacent streets weren’t so lucky. Roofs were gone and walls were blown away. Trees were toppled and twisted into pretzels. Cars were moved and there were boats in a park across the street.

Still clutching my transistor, WLS interrupted morning programming with a weather bulletin: we may be experiencing bad weather this morning. That was an understatement. There were no civil defense sirens that morning. This was a complete surprise, a stealth tornado, and it did millions of dollars in damage – back when a million dollars was a million dollars - in Northern Illinois and Indiana.


Not knowing the complete extent of the damage and whether buses would be running, my mother drove me to school. After dodging fallen trees and electrical lines, we rounded the corner and found there wasn’t much of a school left. The damage was unfathomable to me. The gym was gone, as were many classrooms. Had this thing hit two hours later, with school in session, there would have undoubtedly been an even worse ending with casualties and fatalities.

As students arrived at school, the teachers and principals met us in the parking lot. They said we would not have school today. This was pretty obvious. The eighth graders were crushed. What would happen to our graduation? They told us that other arrangements would be made for either tonight or sometime later in the week. The PTA phone tree later called and informed us that graduation would go on as scheduled at a local high school that sustained little damage. I’ll never forget that sight when we rounded the corner that morning. It wasn’t until years later that I understood how life-threatening this was.

That night, still in a daze from the day’s events, I asked my mother how she knew a tornado was going to hit. She said, “Because my head hurt.”

So much for the multi-million dollar Doppler weather and storm tracking equipment. My mother’s head hurt.


To put this in context: I spent the majority of my time during the spring of my fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade lined up against the lockers. The civil defense sirens were going off continually from March through May. At the height of the Cold War, during fourth and fifth grade, we weren’t sure whether the Russians were invading or a tornado was coming. The sirens were the same. The teachers didn’t know either. Imagine not knowing if you were going to be blown away or blown up. It’s a vivid memory. I remember girls crying, nervous teachers and jumpy principals. We were simply told to put our hands over our heads and be quiet. Sometimes this was for hours at a time. At least it got me out of math, which I hated.

The moral of the story: If your mother has a headache and tells you to go to the basement, do it! No questions asked…..

Part II – Later this week.

Photos courtesy NOAA