The Huntsville Tornado

A few days ago once again we here in Abalama had another tornado outbreak. That tends to happen in the spring or almost anytime cold air from farther north meets up with warm wet humid air from the Gulf of Mexico. We do not typically have mile wide funnels. The vortex is typically smaller in dense wet heavy humid air at lower altitudes. Also forget seeing a funnel here, unless it is at night, and there is simultaneously lots of lightening. Funnel clouds here and on up to Virginia are typically obscured in rain, so you will not see it coming. Unless of course you are unfortunate enough to be close to a really strong one with a glowing funnel. Yes they sometimes have an electric component.

Sometimes people go ranting when local school administrators cancel classes for weather of any kind. If you have ever had a tornado wreck your day, or been stuck for hours in an Atlanta snow and ice storm, you have a definite vision of what a severe weather reality looks like. An Atlanta ice storm is just about as much fun as a hurricane. If you are home when the power goes out you are stuck in either case. The rant poster has obviously not experienced real severe weather so it is perhaps best to ignore and forgive them. Pray they do not ever have to deal with a tornadic reality.

I have seen a lot of snow and ice storms. The key is preparation. Granny says to always have fresh bread. Then stay home until the driveway and surface streets are safe for venturing out. A tornado is a very different affair. The only real way to be safe is to not be where ever it is. Otherwise know of a safe place to take cover, and get there before the storm. That is not always possible, and sometimes there are no safe places. Sometimes an F5 twister will peal the asphalt up off the highway. So be prepared for when the not quite safe room gets rolled around like a barrel with you in it. Well anchored buildings made of concrete and plenty of rebar are best.

After working too many 65 hour weeks trying to resurrect a hopeless third party software contract for the government, our family drove to my sister’s home in Virginia for the weekend of Friday, November 10, 1989. We returned on Tuesday November 14, so I could go back to work the next day. While at Irma’s house on Monday morning, my wife looks and me and says “Wednesday is not a good day. I am going to cancel my ENT appointment.” I am like ok, whatever. That appointment had been made for 4:30 PM. She called and cancelled the appointment, and we didn’t think a lot more about it.

After driving home to Madison, I was up and at work early Wednesday morning. As I recall our contract was with another contract company which had a contract with the prime. All of them were in NYC, or DC. We tried to be at work by 7:30 central time. It made things easier if they had forgotten about the time difference when trying to call for the latest updates. As noted earlier the contract was hopeless, but none of the technical people were aware of that when we signed on. When I returned to work that morning I quickly discovered that I had been brought in so the locals had a “ferriner” to blame. Well you can’t rightly blame someone who is your buddy, so you bring in somebody like me that no one knows. And most places in the south someone who is not from here is a ferriner. BTW a yankee is anyone who is from further north than the speaker. Shortly, I was told to get my stuff and leave. So I did. My wife had been right. Wednesday was not a good day.

I got a call from the local office that afternoon to come sign some paperwork. So I headed back toward Huntsville about 3:30. Arriving there the weather was looking ominous. I had not paid much attention to the forecast, so I was not particularly aware of the imminent tornado threat. As I walked into the building there was a fairly wide cloud overhead trailing off to a narrow thread at the western horizon. I was in the office only a few minutes. When I got back outside the weather had changed dramatically. The sun was no longer visible. The sky was gray, with lots of wind and some rain. I got in my car to drive home. I made my way back to US 72 west, heading under the overpass toward home. Half a mile further west I noticed two vortexes rotating in opposite directions. They were about 50 foot wide. They were moving across this huge cotton field heading southeast, directly at me. There was no time to escape. As the first vortex hit the car, the wind moved it into the left west bound lane, The next vortex rotating the opposite direction followed a couple seconds later. Me and the car were blown back into the right hand west bound lane. I eventually arrived home safe but maybe a bit more concerned about the weather.

When I got home, the Huntsville tornado was the local news. The tornado had touched down in a golf course on the east side of the military base. It had crossed Memorial drive at Airport road, hit the Catholic high school gym, some shopping and small business areas, an apartment complex, and some medical buildings. Reportedly the funnel missed the hospital by maybe fifty foot. From the Airport road area the funnel crossed the mountain to the east of Memorial Drive. On the other side of the mountain Jones Valley Elementary school waited in the path. Many students were still there waiting for their parents to pick them up. As the storm approached their teachers had enough time to get them into an interior hallway in the center of the building. There were no fatalities in the school itself. As I recall nine people died in their cars along the road and at the intersection which was the school entrance. The school was completely wrecked. It looked as if it were in a war zone.

We were lucky that day. My wife’s ENT doctor had an office on the second floor of a large wood and brick medical building just west of the hospital campus. Her appointment was at 4:30 that afternoon. The clocks found in the debris of that building were stopped at 4:37 PM. The only thing left of the building was some of the first floor framing. Very little was left above the four foot mark. On a later visit to that doctor we discovered that all of his patients had canceled that afternoon. He heard the noise, grabbed his assistants, headed down stairs. He said as they stepped off the last step, the building disintegrated around them. Nothing much was left there. Wednesday, November 15, 1989 was not a good day.