Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak
tornado outbreak|name=Palm Sunday (1965) Tornado Outbreak
date=April 11-12, 1965 | image location=palmsundaytwintornadoes.jpg | image name=Picture of the "double tornado" that hit the Midway Trailer Park in Dunlap, Indiana, killing 36. | duration=~11 hours | fujitascale=F5 | tornadoes=50 | total damages (USD)=Unknown | total fatalities=271 | areas affected=Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio}}This article is about the Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak of 1965 in the Midwest, for the 1994 outbreak in the Southeast, see: Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak (1994)The first Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak occurred on April 11, 1965. Forty-eight tornadoes (38 significant, 19 violent, 21 killers) hit the Midwest, making it the second (or third depending on the final tally of the March 12, 2006 tornado outbreak) biggest outbreak on record. In the Midwest, 271 people were killed and 1,500 injured (1,200 in Indiana). It was the deadliest tornado outbreak in Indiana history with 137 people killed. The outbreak also made that week the second most active week in history with 51 significant and 21 violent tornadoes.
The tornadoes were nearly relentless, occurring in a 450-mile swath west-to-east from Clinton County, Iowa, to Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and a 200-mile swath north-to-south from Kent County, Michigan, to Montgomery County, Indiana. The outbreak lasted 11 hours. This outbreak is among the most intense outbreaks ever recorded.
This is the third deadliest day for tornadoes on record, trailing the Super Outbreak of April 3, 1974, which killed 315 and the outbreak that included the Tri-State Tornado which killed 747. It occurred on Palm Sunday, an important day in the Christian religion, and many people were attending services at church, one possible reason why some warnings were not received. There had been a short winter that year, and as the day progressed, the temperature rose to 83° F in some areas of Midwestern United States.
Another destructive Palm Sunday tornado outbreak occurred on March 27, 1994, in Alabama, killing 42: see Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak II.At around 12:55 P.M., the first tornado of the day occurred in Clinton County, Iowa. It was an F4 on the Fujita scale of severity. It was spawned from a thunderstorm cell first detected near Tipton in Cedar County, Iowa around 12:45 P.M. by radio news reporter Martin Jensen at the WMT Stations in Cedar Rapids, some 50 miles northwest of Tipton. The station was equipped with a Collins Radio aviation radar that was mounted on the roof of the station building and used to support severe weather reports on local and regional newscasts. After detecting the strong and very tall thunderstorm, the reporter called National Weather Service offices in Waterloo (which had no radar) and Des Moines to alert them to the storm. His call was to become the first solid evidence obtained by the Weather Service on the growing severe storms that spawned dozens of tornadoes over the next 12 hours.IllinoisA tornado occurred at Crystal Lake, Illinois, where it destroyed several subdivisions and a golf course. It grazed a junior high school then destroyed several homes in a community called Colby's Home Estates. 145 homes were damaged -- 45 beyond repair as well as a shopping centre. Five people were killed. The tornado then overtopped a hill and destroyed the small community of Island Lake, killing one more person before ascending back into the clouds at 3:42 P.M. This was one of a handful of F4 tornadoes that occurred during this outbreak.IndianaLater in the day, the tornadoes became more numerous. Slews of tornadoes touched down in Indiana, and many of them were lethal. Some individual supercells spawned as many as 5 violent tornadoes as they raced from east to west. The first touched down at around 5:30 P.M. in Koontz Lake, Indiana. This massive F4 killed 10 people and injured 180. This tornado then moved northeast toward La Paz and Lakeville where it destroyed a brand new high school that was still under construction. The tornado then moved into Wyatt and destroyed twenty homes.
The first of two F5 tornadoes of the outbreak formed near the St. Joseph County-Elkhart County border and moved east-northeast, first striking Wakarusa, Indiana, where it killed a child. Then it moved toward the towns of Nappanee, Goshen, and Dunlap Elkhart Truth reporter Paul Huffman captured a spectacular series of photographs as this tornado moved toward Goshen, IN; one of these photos is pictured above right. The Palm Sunday Tornado Memorial Park now exists near this location, at the corner of County Road 45 and Cole Street in Dunlap.
*Note: There are some reports that the "Double Funnel" was actually the tornado that hit the Sunnyside addition instead of the Midway Trailer Court (see paragraph below). The tornado was 3/4 of a mile in width (Source: J. Slough).
*Note: At the time of the above picture from the Goshen News, the double funnel strattled highway US 33 and the picture is looking almost due West. The tornado is probably at the corner of US 33 and Mishawaka Road (CR 20) which, if traveling north/north east, would put it in the path of Sunnyside. It had just wiped out the Green Valley neighborhood and most of downtown dunlap. Dunlap United Methodist Church has stained glass on the rebuilt church commemerating those that died in the carnage. The Midway trailer park would be east/southeast of the double funnel at this time and would have been destroyed by an accompaning tornado. There are many original unpublished pictures in the Goshen News and Elkhart Truth archives of the aftermath.(Source: G. Price).
*Also: The ratings of the two alleged F5 tornadoes are disputed, since many official records rate them as F4.
One-half hour later, a second tornado devastated the Sunnyside Housing addition and the unoccupied Sunnyside Mennonite Church. The death toll from the Sunnyside tornado was over 20 people. Most of the 36 people killed in the double tornado had no warning because the high winds had knocked out the telephone and power grids. For the first time in the U.S. Weather Bureau's history, all nine counties in the northern Indiana office's jurisdiction were under a tornado warning. This is called a "blanket tornado warning."
Ninety miles to the south, at just past 7:30PM, another massive tornado slammed into the town of Russiaville, Indiana. Most of the town was destroyed, leaving several dead. The storm churned into nearby Alto, obliterating it completely, before striking the southern edge of the larger city of Kokomo. As the tornado continued east, it killed ten more people in Greentown, Indiana, most of whom had been riding in automobiles that were hurled across the landscape. More destruction ensued in Marion, Indiana, before the storm crossed into Ohio.Michigan and OhioWith the telephone lines down, emergency services in Elkhart County, Indiana, could not warn the people in Michigan that the tornadoes were headed their way. In Michigan, tornadoes hit as far north as Allendale, in Ottawa County, Michigan, just west of Grand Rapids. Out of the southernmost counties of Michigan, all but three (Berrien, Cass, and St. Joseph counties) were hit. Two F4 tornadoes struck Hillsdale County and destroyed about 200 cottages along Lake Bawbeese.It was said many people were saved as they were in church instead of out by the lake. It also devastated the Manitou Beach-Devils Lake area in Lenawee County in a span of a little more then 30 minutes, causing numerous fatalities.
A mile-wide tornado hit in Milan, Michigan, near Detroit. It destroyed the building of Wolverine Plastics (the top employer in Milan), completely removing the roof.
Tornadoes continued from Indiana into Ohio, and additional fatalities occurred across the border. A double tornado was sighted near Toledo, Ohio and that system devastated northern parts of the city with F4 damage. Other violent tornadoes occurred near the Indiana/Ohio border.
At around 11 P.M., another violent tornado touched earth in Lorain County, Ohio and slammed into Pittsfield, killing seven. The same tornado caused F2 damage to homes in Grafton. By the time the storm got to Cleveland, Ohio, the storm "appeared to have split into two paths about a 1/2 mile apart." Large trees laying 50 feet apart were felled lying in different directions. The storm displayed F4/F5 damage near Strongsville where homes literally vanished. This tornado killed 18 people.
The last tornado of the day occurred at 12:30 A.M. on April 12. It moved along a 30-mile path south of Columbus, Ohio, causing F2 damage.The U.S. Weather Bureau later investigated why so many people died in this event. Radar stations were few and far between in 1965, so tornadoes were identified by the characteristic shape of "hook echoes", but the danger in this storm was identified in plenty of time. The real answer was simple: the warning system failed. The Bureau disseminated the warnings quickly, but the public never received them. Additionally, the public did not know the difference between a Forecast and an Alert. Thus the current Tornado watch and Tornado warning program was implemented because of the terrible death toll from the Palm Sunday outbreak. Pivotal to those clarifications was a meeting in the WMT Stations studio in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Officials of the severe storms forecast center in Kansas City met with WMT meteorologist Conrad Johnson and News Director Grant Price. Their discussion led to establishment of the official "watch" and "warning" procedures in use since 1965.
Technology has grown tremendously since 1965; warnings can now be spread via cable and satellite television, PCs and the Internet, solid-state electronics, cell phones, and NOAA Weatheradio.Dr. Ted Fujita discovered suction vortices during the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak. It had been believed the reason why tornadoes could hit one house and leave another across the street completely unscathed was because the whole tornado would "jump" from one house to another. However, the actual reason is because most of the destruction is caused by suction vortices: small, intense mini-tornadoes within the main tornado.* List of tornadoes and tornado outbreaks* The Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak (Blake Naftel)
* The Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak Story (NWS Detroit, MI)
* April 11, 1965, Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak (NWS Indianapolis, IN)* Palm Sunday tornadoes of April 11, 1965, by Tetsuya T. Fujita and Dorothy L. Bradbury, with C. F. Van Thullenar. Chicago Satellite & Mesometeorology Research Project, University of Chicago, 1970. There is no ISBN available; Library of Congress Control Number: 70017916.
* The night of the wicked winds: the 1965 Palm Sunday tornadoes in Ohio, by Roger Pickenpaugh. Baltimore, MD: Gateway Press, 2003. ISBN 0970905939 (paperback).
* Winds of fury, circles of grace: life after the Palm Sunday tornadoes, by Dale Clem. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997. ISBN 0687017955 (alk. paper)
* The mighty whirlwind, by David Wagler. Aylmer, Ontario: Pathway Publishing Corp., 1966. There is no ISBN available; Library of Congress Control Number: 67112646.
* The Palm Sunday Tornado, by Timothy E. Bontrager, 2005. A novel by an author whose grandparents died in the tornado. For details see www.timothybontrager.com. King, Marshall (April 10, 2005). "One for the books". The Elkhart Truth, The Elkhart Truth Online Edition
National Climatic Data Centre Viewed 17/04/2006.
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