Weather History

This Day In Weather History

In 1994, the Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak struck the southeastern U.S. from Alabama to North Carolina. Consisting of 29 tornadoes, two  were violent F4s and seven were strong F3s. The outbreak killed 40 and injured 491. The first F4 tornado raced 50 miles across Northeast Alabama from just south southwest of Ragland, 47 miles northeast of Birmingham, to the very small town of Rock Run, located very close to the Georgia border. The tornado struck late in the morning. Of the 22 deaths, 20 were in Piedmont, where the massive three quarter mile wide vortex leveled the Goshen United Methodist Church. This was an eerie coincidence. During the Palm Sunday outbreak of April 11th, 1965, a pair of F4s tore through Goshen, Indiana. The second F4 struck northwest Georgia. It also had a 50 mile track and reached one mile wide. The F4 damage occurred 15 miles northwest of Canton (40 miles north of Atlanta), where two of the three people were killed.

In 1890, an outbreak of 23 tornadoes tore through the Ohio Valley. Six of those were violent. Hardest hit was Louisville, Kentucky, where 76 people were killed, 200 were injured, and $2.5 million damage resulted.

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In 1977, dense fog played but one major factor in the worst disaster in aviation history when two Boeing 747s collided on the runway at Tenerife Airport in the Canary Islands. In all, 583 people were killed when a KLM 747, attempting to take off, collided with a Pan Am 747 as it was taxiing down the same runway. Both aircraft were among 5 aircraft that had been diverted to Tenerife after a terrorist detonated a bomb at Gran Canaria International Airport on the island of Las Palmas, which had been the original destination for both flights. Miraculously, 61 survived, all of whom were aboard the Pan Am flight.

In 1984, the temperature at Brownsville, Texas soared to 106 degrees, and Cotulla, Texas, reached 108 degrees. The 108 degree torching at Cotulla equaled the March record for the United States at that time.
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