April 4, 1974; Athens (SE) Ohio Wind Event

[Stephen Levine]

Does anyone have a radar archive or other sound explanation for the one of the strangest storms I have ever experienced?

A thunderstorm, arriving about 11:30 pm on 4/3, tapered into gusty winds. However, instead of fading into more of a calm, the winds blowing at about 20 MPH with gusts in the 30's slowly started getting stronger and stronger.
Meanwhile off in the SW sky, staccato flashes of lightning appearing like a strobe light arose over the horizon and slowly got closer.

Bit by bit the winds got stronger and stronger, and within approximately 15 or 20 minutes, they began to roar then finally holler, sounding like a crowd alternately booing and cheering in a crowded sports stadium.

As the winds climaxed, the lightning arrived overhead, and at one point it appeared to illumin two funnel shaped clouds off to my NW.
From time to time, shotgun like blasts of snapping trees would mix in with the shreiking wind.

I stood outside and watched the whole thing, and wind blew rainwater from the ground to hit my face; it was only sprinkling otherwise.

After climaxing, the wind slowly got less and less intense, finally ending up back at the 20 MPH with 30's gusts then easing away from that over time.
During the entire storm, winds blew from the SW; there was no shifting of direction. The lightning passed off to the east and SE as winds faded.

The entire event lasted approximately 1/2 hour.

Significant wind damage occurred across the entire County ranging from downed trees, blown out garage windows to in one case, patios torn from an apartment complex.

I would love to get to the bottom of this mystery as I have never experienced anything quite like that either before or since the event.

 

[Dennis Sherrod]

Stephen,
Was this part of the big tornado outbreak of 04-03-04-74 across several states including Ohio?
Here is a link that may give you some input and also has some more links to some data.
http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/storms/

 

[Simon Andersen]

Thanks for the story, it's always interesting to hear accounts from historical events. Ted Fujita's map of the Super Outbreak tornadoes shows, that the closest tornado to you was an F1 near Circleville, OH at 7:18 pm. Fujita first "discovered" the downburst in 1978, from aerial photographs of tree-damage near Beckley, WV on april 3, 1974.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help, Stephen.

 

[Nick Smith]

Radar photographs do exist, but it takes some effort and money to get copies of them.

I do have to offer this slideshow from the SPC on the event. This particular link is the 03Z (11 PM EDT) national radar composite (upper left). It does show a line of thunderstorms moving into Southeast Ohio.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/publications/corfidi/74outbreak_slides/slide34.html

 

[Angie Norris]

NCDC shows severe thunderstorms for Summit and Monroe counties on 4-3-1974 at 2345 CST. Looks like the latest reported tornado was at 1930 CST in Brown County. Were any of these close by?

 

[Stephen Levine]

I thank each of you for your responses and information; it's deeply appreciated.

The nearest reported tornadoes according to the data occurred 4 hours earlier than this event and were several counties away.

The slides from SPC were quite helpful.

After much reflection on this, and taking into account the slides, I have the following thoughts that I will stay with unless proven incorrect:

A supercell thunderstorm moved through the Athens County area with this event, as part of a line of supercells that moved through the region.

The entire storm was rotating, and had within it's heart an organized meso, with secondary meso-scale movements nearby. Due to subtle atmospheric dynamics that took place in this particular environment, it was a quirk that this system did not produce several tornadoes. Had doppler radar been available at the time, a tornado warning certainly would have been called for the County. The storm was very, very close to producing tornadoes but did not maximize it's energetic potential. The lack of windshift was due to my locale's placement between the organized meso and the secondary meso-scale regions.

The entire complex moved over Athens in a fashon similar to the Nashville, TN event that occured two decades later. Except in the Nashville event, the entire meso came to the ground as a "tornado".

 

[David Draun]

The slowly increasing wind is familiar. I encountered the same type of progression of weather events on 5/29 in Lincoln Nebraska. After falling behind the cyclic supercell that dropped tornadoes from Kearney to past Grand Island (we caught the first funnel/dust whirl, we ended up in Lincoln under semi-clear evening skies. My girlfriend and I walked across the street from our hotel over to the IHOP. Not more than 5 minutes in there, there was this windy drizzle with intensifying lightning. The wind started at about 20mph and built up from there up to damaging levels. It lasted about an hour! It was scary feeling the walls and windows of the IHOP buckling in and out with each gust. Following our meal we walked back across the street. dodging flying roof shingles from our hotel building. Then the precip overhangs from Kansas supercells arrived as well as a squall line behind them. A fantastic night of weather. I was hoping to see the possible tornado south of Lincoln, but I still was treated to plenty of trans tower bolts outside my window. But I just remember the almost 90 minutes of near-damaging wind before the storm arrived.

 

[Nick Smith]

Was there any type of warning issued for your county? Based on this image http://www.spc.noaa.gov/publications/corfidi/74outbreak_slides/slide13.html , it looks like severe thunderstorm or tornado warnings were issued for Gallia and Lawrence Counties and across the border in WV.

FYI, the nearest radars (WSR-57) were at Covington, KY and Pittsburgh, PA. Columbus, OH either had a WSR-1 or -3. Not sure if Charleston, WV had a radar yet (but would in a few years). Athens is about 110-120 nautical miles from CVG and PIT.

 

[Stephen Levine]

Thank you so much, Nick for the slides..

From the image it appears that actual warnings were placed to the E and S. of Athens County, and that Athens County itself was in the clear.
Gallia Co. is 2 counties S. of Athens Co., and Lawrence is 3 counties south.

During the height of the storm, shortly after midnight, a factory blew it's whistle for quite awhile, barely heard above the sound of the wind.
I remember wondering at that time if this was an attempt at a tornado warning, or at least some sort of storm warning.

During the entire time I lived there - September 1971 through August 1974, plus school years in 1970-71, I never heard a tornado siren blow, either in a storm or during any kind of test. I wonder if they actually did have sirens during that time frame; if not a person would have needed to have a radio or TV turned on at the time of any warning, and I was outside during the entire storm.

 

[Chip Redmond]

During the entire time I lived there - September 1971 through August 1974, plus school years in 1970-71, I never heard a tornado siren blow, either in a storm or during any kind of test. I wonder if they actually did have sirens during that time frame; if not a person would have needed to have a radio or TV turned on at the time of any warning, and I was outside during the entire storm.

Hello,
I have been watching this thread carefully the past week and finally decided to post. First off, I am curious, what was your major when you graduated OU? I am currently a fourth year student at OU and a meteorology major.

I find it interesting that you should bring up tornado sirens for Athens. We infact have been under several tornado warnings in the past three years that I have been here. We had a very close call to the city on the 3rd of June this year. I actually wasn't there during this event because several of us were in western Ohio tornado chasing, so I cannot relate to that exact event. However, for all the other warnings there were absolutely no sirens for the city and no warning system of any kind. Its fairly dangerous since there are over 18000 students in this small town. It even got to the point last spring that they had a firm come in and evaluate good locations for sirens within the city, and now they have installed the first one about a week ago atop the new Baker Student Center in the heart of campus.

For as long as records have been kept, and according to the NWS there has been no tornado ever recorded in the county. We are the only county in Ohio that there has never been a tornado. This would most likely explain why there wasn't a warning system in place for all these years. There was a disputed 1980 tornado that is still discussed to this day. It allegedly was a F1 but it is still not confirmed. On the earlier mentioned date of the 3rd of June there supposedly was a tornado in Albany, just to the south, south-west of Athens. This was not confirmed though it remains on the reports for the day on SPC's Event Page.

I looked into the April 3-4 1974 event with the Scalia Labs records. We do have data all the way back to 1950 or so, but most records after 1980 are just high/low temperatures and precipitation amounts. There is no record of winds on these two days, but there was a dramatic temperature difference from the 3rd to the 4th. There was also about .3 inches of rain that fell on the 3rd and none on the 4th.

Just thought I would throw that in there. I am considering looking into it alittle more as those days had so much significant weather in Ohio.


Chip

 

[Stephen Levine]

Thank you for joining the discussion about this event, Chip. You have confirmed my suspicions about the lack of tornado sirens there.

I was in Athens from Fall '70 through to August '74. Spring 1974 was generally a very active year for storms there in general, especially April and June.

I was the official Athens and O.U weather observer in 1972 and 1973, and loved to eat my lunch on top of the weather station there. The job included keeping detailed records as well as giving presentations to meteorology classes about the instruments housed in the shelter.

At the time there was one meteorology class, which I took and received an 'A' in.

I remember there being an article in Athens' paper within a day or two about the wind damage from the 4/3-4 storm.

 

[Chip Redmond]

Well those details on the weather (the max, min, and rain) I mentioned early were your recordings! Haha thats crazy! We are going through all the years making sure the recordings are complete to make them available on our site.

If I am thinking right that is probably when the weather station was atop Porter Hall wasn't it? You wouldn't happen to have a copy of that paper would you? I would love to have something like that to display up at the lab or on the site!


Chip

 

[Mike Smith]

A small quibble with Steve's Slide 14 regarding the convective outlooks for April 3, 1974.

While he is technically correct that SCTD=MDT officially, that was not the practice at that time. In practice, it was SCTD = HIGH.

The category above SCTD was NMRS. I think I saw it a grand total of once in the decades it was in use.

And, if you are curious, the category below SCTD was FEW.

 

[Adam Lucio]

Do you remember anything about the temperatures during the event? Your description has some similarities to what Ive read about heat bursts. Its a long shot and I dont know much about heat bursts but I think they can be created by outflows from a dissapated band of storms. As the wind rushes out the friction across the ground can heat the air and accelerate the winds. Ive read these events can build slowly and last long. One happened in Nebraska earlier this year.

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=17273

Just tossing out some other possibilities for you to research.

Those SPC slides were really neat. Im going to have to look at those more in depth when I have time.

 

[Stephen Levine]

Thank you, Chip, Adam and Mike.

Indeed the old station was on top of Porter Hall, the old science building.
Unfortunately I do not have a copy of that paper where I saw the article.

Regarding temperatures, there was no change in temperature during the thunderstorm that preceeded the wind event or during the wind event itself.
I would estimate from memory that it was in the lower 70's and still quite humid as it had been all day.