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| Michigan tornadoes since 1950 when records began being kept. |
A tornado is a violent rotating column of air descending from a thunderstorm and touching down on the ground, usually spinning counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. There is no shortage of tornadoes in the deadly swatch of America called "tornado alley"--a nickname given to a large area beginning in Texas and running through the Great Plains states northeast through the Midwest and the Great Lakes, stretching into Canada. The official boundaries are not clearly defined.
The term was first used in 1952 as the title of a research project by U.S. Air Force meteorologists Major Ernest J. Fawbush and Captain Robert C. Miller. Tornado season runs from mid-March into September--the worst month being June.
Allen Park, Michigan, is located south of Detroit in an area known as Downriver--statistically a low risk area for tornadoes. But on May 12th, 1956, the day before Mothers' Day, an F4 tornado ripped through town and injured twenty-two people, damaging property in its wake.
An F4 rating is listed as "devastating" [207 mph to 260 mph] by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA]. Tornado ranking was developed by T. Theodore Fujita and first used in 1973 and enhanced in 2007 [see link for more detailed information].
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| --from Images of America [series] Allen Park by Sharon Broglin |
This was a lucky day for Allen Parkers, only twenty-two people were injured with no fatalities. Flint, Michigan, had a tornado the same day with three fatalities and one-hundred, sixteen injuries. Only three years before, the Flint area had an F5 tornado, the most devastating tornado in Michigan state history--with one-hundred, sixteen deaths and eight-hundred, forty-four injuries.
NOAA Severe Weather 101--Tornado Basics: http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/tornadoes/
More information on the Fujita tornado rating scale: http://www.angelfire.com/nj4/tornadoes/page3.html
Was living in Detroit at the time was 13 years old remember hearing about the tornado 2 years later we moved to Taylor Mich a neighbor that lived next door to do said he watched the tornado form.
ReplyDeleteI stood on my front porch on Quandt St and saw the wedge shaped cloud formation and told my parents it was a tornado but they poo poo'd it...I was, after all, a 10 yr old girl. It started to hail and I was still on the porch watching the cloud edge swirl......next thing I knew, we were huddled in the basement because I had forecasted my first tornado. It would not be my last. Should've been a meteorologist!!
ReplyDeleteKirk Essler. this tornado also hit Lincoln Park. I was 5 years old and remember the beams of a nearby church flying down our street, Garfield. We were on the corner at Porter. Several houses on our street and White St.were damaged but our house was unscathed.
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