I feel I have been challenged. Scott said I never post anything here that he doesn’t already know. Spurred by that remark and inspired by the bad weather early this morning, here is a list of tornadoes in Madison County during the years I lived there.
Yeah, tornadoes. I know, it’s weird. But tornadoes have been formative experiences in my life. Many of my most vivid childhood memories involve the weather. I was a weather junkie from an early age. During one of my weather kicks when I was maybe 12, I determined, on the basis of the barometric pressure, wind speed, etc. that it would rain later that day. At the time, the sun was shining. I told my brother and his friend Chris Grant about it and they scoffed. Later that day, it did indeed rain, and they were appropriately impressed by my forecasting prowess.
One of my most cherished possessions is the massive (now out of print) tome compiled by the Tornado Project entitled Significant Tornadoes–1680-1991 by Thomas P. Grazulis. It weighs 8 lbs, according to the website, and contains 1340 pages. From that I will begin compiling a narrative of the ones I remember most from childhood.
I obtained a raw list from the Tornado Project website and have at least the dates here. For now I’ll stick to the ones in the 60s and 70s, of which there were 18 listed in Madison county.
June 6, 1961, 3 p.m., F1, 0 dead, 0 injured
March 11, 1963, 5:40 p.m., F2, 0 dead, 0 injured
November 24, 1967, 1:05 p.m., F2, 0 dead, 7 injured
December 18, 1967, 3:25 a.m., F2, 0 dead, 27 injured
December 21, 1967, 7:30 p.m., F1, 0 dead, 1 injured
April 24, 1970, 6:30 a.m., F2, 0 dead, 0 injured
May 19, 1973, 2:40 p.m., F2, 0 dead, 10 injured
November 27, 1973, 6:33 p.m., F3, 0 dead, 42 injured
April 1, 1974, 9:40 p.m., F3, 1 dead, 6 injured
*April 3, 1974, 6:15 p.m., F5, 9 dead, 110 injured
*April 3, 1974, 7 p.m., F5, 5 dead, 110 injured
*April 3, 1974, 9:35 p.m., F3, 2 dead, 3 injured
March 20, 1976, 10:08 p.m., F1, 0 dead, 0 injured
March 20, 1976, 10:22 p.m., F2, 0 dead, 0 injured
March 20, 1976, 10:25 p.m., F0, 0 dead, 0 injured
July 17, 1977, 1:45 p.m., F2, 0 dead, 0 injured
The starred entries are the major storms (up until the more recent huge one on November 15, 1989). More to come.
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