A day to remember

It was when a super tornado outbreak occurred in Ohio and Pennsylvania. It was the largest one-day onslaught of tornadoes our state has experienced.

Twenty-one of 23 tornadoes touched down in Pennsylvania that steamy day. Sixty-five people died. The storms caused $300 million in damage.

I missed those storms. My sophomore year at Edinboro University ended two weeks before the storms struck with their violent fury. A tornado annihilated Albion, just west of Edinboro.

One of the tornadoes in Wheatland, Mercer County, was clocked as an F5 on the Fujita scale with more than 300 mph winds -- the strongest tornado believed to ever strike Pennsylvania soil. Another tornado, an F4 with winds up to 260 mph, blasted Atlantic, Crawford County, and bent over a 300-foot-tall ATT relay tower like a toothpick.

"Perhaps the lesson to be learned from the 1985 outbreak is that under the proper atmospheric conditions, major tornadoes can occur irrespective of the location or terrain," the National Weather Service said after the tornadic outbreak.

A F4 tornado rumbled through the Moshannon State Forest in Clearfield, Centre, Cameron and Clinton counties and traveled about 72 miles. It was a half-mile wide. Only one person was injured.

The weather service now has better radar ä the Doppler ä than it did the day of the storms. The expertise of the Storm Prediction Center, formerly the National Severe Storms Forecast Center, and other parts of the National Weather Service has improved.

Alerting the public has also improved through the Emergency Alert System, the former Emergency Broadcast System.

The meteorologist-in-charge of the old Williamsport forecast office of the weather service had bragged in a public meeting about two years after the 1985 outbreak on how well his office performed. A tornado that hit the Watsontown-Allenwood areas of Lycoming, Union and Northumberland counties.

The only problem was the forecast office issued the EBS alert after the tornado hit the ground and killed six people and injured 60 others. I found that tidbit scouring the local broadcasters' after-action report while bored one day at the Lewisburg radio station where I worked at the time. The meteorologist spit-and-sputtered when confronted about it.

The EAS now overrides a radio or TV station's programming and sends the alert.

It's hard to believe it's been 25 years -- 25 years since the gates of hell opened up over Pennsylvania and left death and destruction in its wake.