Dodging the Bullet

I was checking Wikipedia last night and came across a couple of lines that lead me to a new discovery.

Xenia, Ohio -- Tornadoes

”On April 3, 1974 a tornado[4] measuring F-5 on the Fujita scale cut a path directly through the middle of Xenia during the Super Outbreak, the largest series of tornadoes in recorded history.”

If you’re my age (or older), you probably remember that night. You may have heard, we had quite a night of our own Thursday might. When I clicked on the “Super Outbreak” link in the text above, I found out just how big of a night.

"The Super Outbreak is the second largest tornado outbreak on record for a single 24-hour period. From April 3 to April 4, 1974, there were 148 tornadoes confirmed in 13 US states,...."

"With a death toll of over 300, this outbreak was the deadliest since the 1925 Tri-State Tornado and its associated outbreak until the April 25–28, 2011 tornado outbreak, which killed at least 338 people."

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Wikipedia? Obviously, it isn’t perfect. The first article (about the Xenia Outbreak) needs to be updated. But already Wikipedia has built quite a page on the latest outbreak. When you grew up with encyclopedias and almanacs, it is just amazing. And all for free!

Anyway, like so much of my life (thankfully), there wasn’t any drama at my house. At one time I was posting on Facebook that there was a tornado north and south of me. We were in a gap. The wind barely blew. We never lost power. We never even lost our internet connection. Obviously, not everyone was so lucky.




(15th Street in Tuscaloosa, AL from Wikimedia)



I’m on day 5 of a bad cold that has kept me from taking even my normal pictures at the lake, so I haven’t been out to look at the damage myself. But from the descriptions alone, I know how lucky I am to have dodged this bullet.

Don Brown
April 30, 2011