As a kid growing up in rural Crawford County during the 1980s and ’90s, I thought about tornadoes a lot. If there was a tornado watch or warning (or, really, even a severe thunderstorm), I noticed the visible concern among adults. I’d heard the stories. Everybody seemed to have one. I also knew the signs and what to do. Some of my own first stories that I ever wrote were about a group of friends chasing tornadoes around Pennsylvania. Tornadoes, from what a young me simply assumed, were a common occurrence and constant deadly threat in our little corner of the state.
That, of course, isn’t true. Pennsylvania is far from tornado alley. My fears were not irrational though. According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there have been over 1,000 recorded tornado touch downs across the commonwealth since 1950 – and the fear that I saw on the faces of adults was due to fresh memories of the deadliest tornado outbreak in Pennsylvania history.
On May 31, 1985, now 40 years ago, this devastating outbreak struck Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario. Dozens of twisters spawned throughout the region, claiming the lives of 89, injuring another 1,000, and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. The National Weather Service explains that the historic outbreak resulted from “high levels of atmospheric instability … triggered by the passage of a strong late-spring cold front” on an unseasonably hot spring day. Since this predated the implementation of the NEXRAD Doppler radar system (introduced in 1988 and drastically improving tornado predictions across the United States), many people in their paths only had minutes or even seconds to take cover…