Tenebrous
According to my favorite source for daily holidays, the word of the day for today is "tenebrous," which apparently means dark and gloomy. Since today is also an auspicious day for tornado buffs, and since I associate tornadoes with the color black, I chose a simple black bow. This one is another of my Wal-Mart cheer bows.
I haven't had an excuse to wear these earrings in a good long time, but they're some of my favorites. The Etsy shop, CorvidArtsBoutique, is no longer selling.
I've been a tornado buff ever since I was three. It was 1991 then, and that particular spring was an active one. One particular tornado, one that struck Wichita and Andover, Kansas, left a huge impression on my toddler mind. The video of that tornado striking McConnell Air Force Base is one of my all-time favorites (link is HERE; parents cautioned due to language). Seventeen people died in that tornado, but none of them were on the air base. You'd have guessed from all the damage that there'd have been fatalities at McConnell, but there weren't.
So yeah, I've been a tornado buff for most of my life, but today isn't the anniversary of the Wichita/Andover tornado; that was back in April. No, tonight will make exactly seventy years ago that Flint, Michigan got creamed by an F5 tornado. At least 116 died, most of them in the Coldwater Road area where there were a lot of families packed together in flimsy post-war houses. The Gensel and Tuttle families each lost five members (both families had one survivor), the Gatica and Kilgore families lost four (the Gatica father survived and the Kilgores were wiped out), the Vaughn family lost three (two or three survivors), and I know I'm missing some more families that lost two or three. I did notice an error on Find a Grave, on the memorial page for Lorne Robinson. The website calls Lorne "she," but I know for a fact that he was a man. Lorne's wife Dorothy was interviewed for an episode of The Wrath of God, and she describes her experience in detail. Lorne was the one who sounded the alarm, stating that the roar they all heard was a tornado rather than the airplanes that Dorothy had guessed. Dorothy and her two older daughters sheltered under a bed, while Lorne hid with youngest girl Barbara in a closet. Both Lorne and Barbara were killed (Barbara's memorial is HERE), while Dorothy and the other two girls were seriously injured but recovered. Lorne's final moments were gruesome and frightening; Dorothy bluntly stated that when she found him he was moaning and bleeding from the nose and mouth, suggesting massive injuries to the head, chest, or both. Barbara, on the other hand, looked like she was sleeping, indicating that her death was quick. It was a terrible tornado, the last one to kill a hundred people at once...until Joplin got hit, that is. Tenebrous indeed!
The very next day another very violent tornado ripped through...y'all ready for this? Massachusetts got hit. Massachusetts is NOT a tornado hotbed, but that day they got hit. That tornado was rated an F4, though experts think now that that rating is too low. Either way 94 people died in that particular tornado, with the worst death toll being in Worcester. In the northeast there exists this style of house called a three-decker or triple-decker, and those turned out to be death traps when the tornado swept through. A detailed account on the Flint and Worcester tornadoes can be found HERE, at Stormstalker's blog. I freaking love Stormstalker. His real name is Shawn Schuman, and he goes through historical outbreaks in excruciating detail. As an aside, some Worcester's surviving triple-deckers are now on the National Register of Historic Places. Some of those buildings are now over a hundred years old, so I think such an honor is deserved. I wonder...if those buildings could talk, would they speak of their fellow triple-deckers that collapsed in the tornado, and of the people that died inside them, just like we speak of our dead? Oh, I'd love to hear what tales those buildings have to say, good and bad!
And there, my dears, is more than y'all ever wanted to know about a pair of seventy-year-old tornadoes! Stormstalker tells it better, believe me. As for the Bootheel...well, it's been dry, hot, and hazy for the past week and a half, and it looks like it's gonna stay that way. Rain is possible on Sunday, but "possible" doesn't mean it absolutely will rain. The haze is from forest fires in Canada, if y'all can believe that. My point is that we shouldn't have to worry about tornadoes for quite some time.
Love,
RagingMoon1987
So yeah, I've been a tornado buff for most of my life, but today isn't the anniversary of the Wichita/Andover tornado; that was back in April. No, tonight will make exactly seventy years ago that Flint, Michigan got creamed by an F5 tornado. At least 116 died, most of them in the Coldwater Road area where there were a lot of families packed together in flimsy post-war houses. The Gensel and Tuttle families each lost five members (both families had one survivor), the Gatica and Kilgore families lost four (the Gatica father survived and the Kilgores were wiped out), the Vaughn family lost three (two or three survivors), and I know I'm missing some more families that lost two or three. I did notice an error on Find a Grave, on the memorial page for Lorne Robinson. The website calls Lorne "she," but I know for a fact that he was a man. Lorne's wife Dorothy was interviewed for an episode of The Wrath of God, and she describes her experience in detail. Lorne was the one who sounded the alarm, stating that the roar they all heard was a tornado rather than the airplanes that Dorothy had guessed. Dorothy and her two older daughters sheltered under a bed, while Lorne hid with youngest girl Barbara in a closet. Both Lorne and Barbara were killed (Barbara's memorial is HERE), while Dorothy and the other two girls were seriously injured but recovered. Lorne's final moments were gruesome and frightening; Dorothy bluntly stated that when she found him he was moaning and bleeding from the nose and mouth, suggesting massive injuries to the head, chest, or both. Barbara, on the other hand, looked like she was sleeping, indicating that her death was quick. It was a terrible tornado, the last one to kill a hundred people at once...until Joplin got hit, that is. Tenebrous indeed!
The very next day another very violent tornado ripped through...y'all ready for this? Massachusetts got hit. Massachusetts is NOT a tornado hotbed, but that day they got hit. That tornado was rated an F4, though experts think now that that rating is too low. Either way 94 people died in that particular tornado, with the worst death toll being in Worcester. In the northeast there exists this style of house called a three-decker or triple-decker, and those turned out to be death traps when the tornado swept through. A detailed account on the Flint and Worcester tornadoes can be found HERE, at Stormstalker's blog. I freaking love Stormstalker. His real name is Shawn Schuman, and he goes through historical outbreaks in excruciating detail. As an aside, some Worcester's surviving triple-deckers are now on the National Register of Historic Places. Some of those buildings are now over a hundred years old, so I think such an honor is deserved. I wonder...if those buildings could talk, would they speak of their fellow triple-deckers that collapsed in the tornado, and of the people that died inside them, just like we speak of our dead? Oh, I'd love to hear what tales those buildings have to say, good and bad!
And there, my dears, is more than y'all ever wanted to know about a pair of seventy-year-old tornadoes! Stormstalker tells it better, believe me. As for the Bootheel...well, it's been dry, hot, and hazy for the past week and a half, and it looks like it's gonna stay that way. Rain is possible on Sunday, but "possible" doesn't mean it absolutely will rain. The haze is from forest fires in Canada, if y'all can believe that. My point is that we shouldn't have to worry about tornadoes for quite some time.
Love,
RagingMoon1987
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