#superoutbreak

Thursday? Map Day! Because we’ve been sharing photos of the Dust Bowl for the last week, we thought we’d provide a different kind of weather-related map. Created by Dr. Tetsuya Theodore “Ted” Fujita, this documents the Super Outbreak of tornadoes that swept across the United States in 1974.

Wednesday? Map Day! And with severe weather season well underway, we bring you Dr. Tetsuya Theodore Fujita’s map of 1974’s massive Superoutbreak of tornadoes throughout the Midwest.

Today was a memorable day for me. A very memorable one. One year ago today, there was a really big tornado outbreak in the southeast portion of the USA. I have always had a fear of thunderstorms although it has not always been this bad. I live in the southeast so I was part of this outbreak. Thankfully there was not a huge tornado but we did have a lot of damage, but that does not put on the level of some others that night. Let me tell you why God was so good that night to me.

Here's the story:

It all started out a normal day in April only three days after Easter. All of the weather stations had been telling us about the forecast for days. They were informing us that there was going to be a lot of bad weather. We were concerned but not to scared. Little did we know. The night before, the weatherman told us it was going to get pretty bad. Because we live here in the south, we are used to bad weather throughout the year. We don't always take tornado warnings as we should and thunderstorms come and go. We just decided to take it by ear.

That morning, there was a high chance of severe weather. It was raining all morning. About 10:00 a.m., my high school was told that the tornado warning had expired. We didn't even know that we were under the warning because it was sunny outside! All the other schools in the county had been in the basement all morning to the weather. All of our teachers reviewed the instructions for inclement weather, we started to ponder the situation.

That afternoon, a booming announcement blasted over the intercom. My school gets out at 3:30 p.m. It was our principal telling all of the seniors and juniors to make sure that they went straight home due to weather and that all activities were canceled. About five minutes later, his voice came back. At 3:10, he ordered all of us to pack our stuff as quickly as possible and to exit the school immediately. They were expecting a tornado/storm to enter our county in about 45 minutes. We had to be out of the school in less than five minutes, fifteen before school was originally let out. If we weren't gone in fifteen minutes, then the school was going to have to keep us there due to county policy. As we ran out, I called my mom. She is a school teacher at an elementary school in the north part of our county, while I go to school in the southwest. She informed me that her students had been under tornado lock down for 45 minutes in the school hallway in the position. She was running late due to the sudden notice of release. I had to wait on her for about twenty minutes and I was waiting with the Japanese transfer student. She was scared to death. When my mom got there, I looked her in the eyes and said, "I want to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house, now." She agreed and we raced home to pack our things. I live in a house with no brick and no basement. There really is not a great place to go for bad weather. We packed our things and we left and agreed to meet my dad at their house. The rain was pouring. Every 2 minutes, the radio would go off warning us of the weather. My mom said that if we saw a funnel cloud, we would go to a small business and hide there. My grandparents live about 20 minutes away on the county line, so we were praying to get there safely. We were on the lookout. As soon as we pulled in the driveway at my grandparents house, the thunderstorm rolled in. We dashed inside and put my parents car in their large basement. My grandparents were worried, but I think I had them beat. My grandmother made us a large dinner and my dad met us there. While we ate, we prayed for safety. I remember looking at the radar and seeing blood red circles rolling from the south into our area. There was not just one of them, there were many just sprinkled across the screen. Each one had large hail, and a lot of lightning. Each one had lots of rotation and numerous warnings with it. Warnings scrolled across the screen and there were many meteorologists in the weather studio. Pretty much everywhere was under a warning. They could not keep control of every one and the new things it brought. It was pure chaos. Right then and there, we knew that this was not going to be a normal night. I didn't eat a lot that night due to my fear. The storms just kept getting stronger and stronger. The weatherman told us that there had been many funnel clouds and trained spotters had seen tornadoes on the ground. That's when it happened. I had a panic attack. A mental breakdown. I lied on the couch with a blanket and I shook and shook. My grandmother had to hold me and calm me down. I cried and sobbed and my brain spun in circles. I had rededicated to God earlier that year, so my faith was pretty strong. I couldn't think. I thought we were going to die that night and I wanted to run. Run away from it all. I knew that I couldn't control it. I knew God was in control, but still, there's always doubts. My mom wondered why I was crying. My dad was convinced that the strongest storm on the radar was heading towards us. The storm had baseball sized hail, heavy rain, and a possible tornado. The storm was moving fast. I continued to wail, and my grandparents tried to comfort me. My grandfather was not afraid, and my grandmother told me that she wasn't either. She said that God was in control and that we had to trust in Him. She said even if we did die, we would go to Heaven with Jesus. That did comfort me, but I still had my attack. She stroked me and held me. I put my iPod in and tried to tune it out. The storms kept coming and popping up. Tornadoes were on the ground and hail kept falling near us. The storms never weakened. They were so strong. The one that my dad was worried about kept creeping towards us. Tornadoes popped on and off. Finally, the clouds grew dark and heavy. Rain started going again. As we sat there waiting, when we heard the hail come. Hail fell just outside the house. Today, I can still remember the sound of the cracking against the ground. It was so scary. My dad looked out the window as my grandmother got some flashlights. My dad told us to head down to the basement quickly. We ran down to the basement. I grabbed my Bible, water, my cellphone, and my iPod while the blanket draped around my neck. Down in the basement, we sat down and listened to the wind howl, the rain pour, and the hail continue to fall. The power flickered a little and I remembered one of my favorite Bible verses. It is Hebrew 13:5-6.It says that the Lord will never leave us, and we shall not fear. It calmed me down tremendously! I knew that God would never leave and not let go. I shouldn't worry when I have no control. The One who loves me will NEVER leave me in the darkness. We all held hands and we prayed for safety for the us and the ones around us. The storm only lasted for ten minutes. When we thought it was done, we headed back up stairs. We looked outside and saw white. It looked like snow. The hail was easily the size of golf balls and there were some baseball sized too! I picked some up and my dad and grandfather took pictures of it as it froze my hands. I could only fit three pieces in my hands. My dad uploaded the pictures to Facebook. I thought that the worse had passed and that we would just have small storms the rest of the night. Again, little did I know. The power flickered again and the power went out for a minute. When it came back on, the TV screen showed an emergency alert for a tornado near our area. I forgot to mention this, but that stupid thing with the stupid sound had been going on the TV and radio all night long. Before we had time to think we heard the hail pour down again. The lights flickered. We grabbed our things and ran downstairs again. The storm was even stronger than the first one. The lights stayed on for about two minutes, but soon went out. I was nervous but I passed the time by riding on my grandparents exercise equipment. When it stopped, the lights came back on. We looked outside through the basement door. Once again, we saw white. We also saw that my grandparent's garden had been destroyed. We went back upstairs. The power went back out again, and we lit some candles. The power didn't come back on for a few more hours. We sat in the darkness and waited. We didn't know if there would be any more storms. Since my grandparents live near the border, they have to take every warning for the county next to them as well as our county. I called my friend that lives in my neighborhood and asked her to look at the radar for us. She said that another storm was coming and that we should be on the lookout again. That storm did not turn out to be as bad as it appeared. About 30 minutes later, my dad and I went down to the basement to turn on the radio in my mom's car to see if there were any more warnings. As soon as we turned on the radio, warnings blared. There was a tornado warning with a tornado on the ground a few miles away from us. They never said how big it was, but we knew it wasn't good. I ran back upstairs to tell the others. They said that the location was in the county but in another community. They assured me that we would go back down if we needed to. Thank goodness we didn't need to. My dad called my other grandmother to see if she was okay. Her power had gone out, but she was okay. I heard a sound that sounded like a train. I couldn't tell if it was an actual train or a tornado. I started to get scared again. We ran back downstairs, but nothing happened. That pretty much marked the end of the night. The power came back on after that. We saw that all the storms had FINALLY gone north of us and that they had weakened. We were so relieved. I got on the computer and saw so many pictures of hail from my friends. I had school the next day but my mom decided to let me spend the night at my grandparents and skip school the next day. We thought that school would be canceled but it wasn't. My parents went ahead and headed home. They called and said that trees were down everywhere, along with power lines and it looked like a hurricane had hit. I was thankful that God helped me that night. I went to sleep calmly that night.

The next morning, I woke up and saw devastating scenes on TV. I heard about the tornadoes and devastation in the Southeast. In my state, 32 people died from tornadoes. About 30 tornadoes touched down in my section of the state, including the one that I thought was a tornado with the train sounds. My awesome grandmother took me to Chick-fil-a for lunch. It looked bad outside. I knew the storm last night was definitely something that I would remember forever. When I went home later that afternoon, I saw my house. The storm caused a leak in the upstairs bathroom, a knocked down mailbox, gutters down, a damaged roof, siting down, and a traumatized golden retriever. I know that it could have been a lot worse.