This writing was originally submitted as an assignment for one of my classes.
In the foyer of Eastside Elementary in Cynthiana, KY, above the trophy/presentation cases hung a black & white photograph of a tornado in the sky, overlooking the Harrison County Bus Garage. I noticed this picture when I was in the first or second grade, and it has held a special place in my mind for some time.
I believe that I had asked my mother one afternoon if she had ever noticed it, and knew when the picture was taken. She proceeded to tell me of a day in when she was eleven, going on twelve, back in 1974 that seemed to be fairly uneventful. She had noticed what time it was getting to be—that her favorite show was about to come on the air—so she dashed to the kitchen, grabbed and empty Pepsi bottle, ran out the front door and around the corner to the neighboring convenient store. Like a whirlwind she ran into the store, placing her bottle on the counter, ran to the back to retrieve a new one, ran back to the counter, dropping some change on it as she flew past. Exiting the door, rounding the corner back to her home, she was stopped by a gust of wind carrying dirt and leaves into her face. Shaking her head, and brushing her hair from her brow, she looked up and saw a huge black cloud in the distance. Puzzled, confused and scared, she was frozen. Her jaw dropped, and her hand lost it’s grip on her soft drink. She could hear police sirens wailing and the civil defense siren begin to spin up. Her mother bolted out the door of their apartment, scooped her up off the sidewalk, ran inside with her and took her to the bedroom to hurdle on the floor with her siblings under the mattress.
Mom then began to tell me that from what she had heard from my father and what she had read in the paper, that roughly the same time, just a few miles away near the community of Connersville, my dad was hiding in the basement with his parents and sister, listening to the wind screaming outside before it ripped the roof off their home.
She then went on to tell me how there had been an outbreak of tornadic storms that day, and that several cities and towns were hit pretty hard. She told me of a small place called Xenia, OH, over 100 miles away that was destroyed, and how those of us here, in Cynthiana and other places in Kentucky and other states faired better.
It was then that I began to have an interest in weather.
I’ve not experienced an event in my lifetime that sticks out as well as the one that I was told. I’ve experienced some nice flooding, snow, and ice events. I’ve had my home become surrounded by water up to four feet deep in the front lawn from rains that flooded area streams. I’ve dug my way through three feet snows, slid around on inches of ice, even helped clean up buildings that were completely filled with water in 1997. None of these have compared to hearing about the Super Outbreak.
I hope to learn as much as I can from this class, particularly what goes on there in Norman and how the SPC comes to figuring out probabilities for phenomena. I want to know more about the GFS, NAM, etc. I want to know everything! (I probably want to know more than what this course was designed to handle!)
NOTE: I am not affiliated with or responsible for any of the images linked within this message. Images were obtained via an Internet search and were included for educational purposes. Click images to enlarge–you will be leaving the APU/AMU servers. Yes, I did embed a Wikipedia link, and we all know that the educational system “hates” Wikipedia; but you can use Wikipedia as a good springboard to further develop your research–that’s what the referenced footnotes in the Wikipedia article are for! 😉
Mirrored from Being Jeremiah Palmer.
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