A storm was building along the Locust Fork of the Warrior River where I lived on a small sheltered slough.
Lightning whipcracked a pine tree not 40 yards from me, setting it aflame. But the fire wasn't orange or red; it was green from the turpentine and sap and resins and bark and needles all catching at once.
Then the tree began to whistle as steam escaped from all the tiny holes made over the years by pine beetles and woodpeckers. The whistling changed into a jet engine roar at the instant the fire changed to orange and, with a mighty upward whoosh, consumed every last combustible molecule of pine.
Then, as suddenly as the lightning had come, the fire was gone and all that stood was a blackened lodgepole, slick with creosote.
The storm grew in might until it spawned the worst kind of tornado, an F-5 or Finger of God.
In Oak Grove, Alabama, Debra and Tom Jackson were sitting in their living room watching tv when a relative phoned to say 'take cover,' because a twister was about to hit. They ran to their concrete pump house in the back yard just as the town fire engine came crashing through their roof, landing on the sofa where they had been sitting.The next morning, on assignment for the Atlanta newspaper, with reporter's notebook in hand, I picked my way through the rubble of three different towns, all completely leveled. In Edgewater, I saw a dead man slung over the limb of a tree, too high for his relatives to reach because their ladders, along with their houses and sheds, were gone with the wind.
A woman sat, hugging herself, staring vacantly through the windshield of the only shelter she had left in the world: a broke down Cutlass.
There is no accounting for where things will end up after they are sucked aloft by 300 mph winds. Aluminum siding, brick walls, heart pine floors, refrigerators, joists and Ford pickup trucks travel in patterns that seem nonsensical relative to their weights and aerodynamic features.
The storm of April 1998 produced 62 separate tornados, but the one that ripped through our area, the F5, took 34 lives and millions of board feet of dwellings.
The storm lasted four days, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, hurling family photo albums and car titles from here all the way to the Georgia Capitol where their arrival was talked about on the radio.
It was Easter week, and the pale yellow and pink tufts coating shrubs and ditches were not chicks or decorations or azalea blossoms but the pastel attic insulation that came unmoored when the tornado raised our roofs and razed our houses. It hung like strange fruit, mimicking a gayer time when there were still chocolate eggs and lawns to run on and church pews and kitchen tables at which people could gather together to ask for a blessing.
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The facts of this story were reported and printed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and I lived to tell it.
I've always had a fascination with tornadoes. Having been spared an actual encounter with one (hard to do the past few years), the fascination remains.
Beautiful writing about something beautiful in nature that rips up lives on the ground. Until I read this (tornadoes are part of life in Minnesota), I had not considered their beauty.
I never pass up a piece on tornados having survived one as a boy and picking up the pieces after. "There is no accounting for where things will end up after they are sucked aloft by 300 mph winds." Good work.
We had tornados in Iowania... the northern end of tornado alley... I suppose that has something to do with me adoring "The Wizard of Oz." With tornados came hope.
This is a great account of a twister... brings back memories about truths and fictions (usually stranger than truth) around tornados.
Having mastered the tornado, I'd like to invite you for our next earthquake. The big boy's due any time now.
"Look out, Cleveland, the storm is comin' through
And it's runnin' right up on you
Look out, Houston, there'll be thunder on the hill
Bye bye, baby, don't you lie so still."
- The Band
Memories of the event came back to me because my editor just died. He'd assigned it to me, said "you can do this" when I was unsure because the trauma was so close to home and personal. He handled my copy and gave me the all-important "attagirl" when it was over. Ron Taylor was a great editor, and those who worked under him were lucky.