May 31, 1985 Tornado Outbreak…Thirty Years Later

Well, here is my recollection of Friday, May 31, 1985, the day of the Eastern Ohio-Western Pennsylvania tornado outbreak, probably the biggest event to happen in my lifetime. It was this event that really sparked my interest in weather, especially thunderstorms and tornadoes. I remember that day vividly, and was eight years old at the time. There were about forty-three tornadoes that day, give or take a couple tornadoes, mainly affecting Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, along with parts of Western New York and Ontario, Canada. The strongest tornado of the day, an F5(top of the scale), started its destructive journey in Ohio around the area of Ravenna Arsenal, and it moved eastward and tore through Newton Falls and Niles(places I have been to), before crossing the border into Pennsylvania and pretty much wiping out Wheatland, just south of Sharon. This tornado continued through Hermitage before dying out right before entering Mercer. The tornado carried an airplane wing ten miles before dropping it. This was the strongest tornado in PA recorded history. Other communities in PA that were hit very hard by F4 tornadoes were Albion and Atlantic. It seems like places along PA Route 18 were really targeted that day. Other places hit by tornadoes were Tionesta and Kane, both in PA. The F4 tornado that tore through Moshannon State Forest in Central PA was at times TWO MILES WIDE!! And that wasn’t even the strongest tornado!! This particular tornado moved along Interstate 80 for a distance in the Moshannon vicinity, knocking down signs along that road. Could you imagine being on 80 at that time and seeing a tornado that big?? Fortunately, that tornado went through unpopulated areas around Moshannon, but it destroyed a large portion of the forest. A lot of tornadoes that day were of monstrous sizes.

Now, I’m going to talk about the tornado that affected my area, that being the F3 tornado that went across northern portions of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, and my recollection of that meteorologically amazing day, so here it goes…The weather was beautiful for much of that Friday, bright sunshine and clear blue skies, which was a VERY bad thing. The sun just makes the atmosphere more unstable, and GREATLY increases the chance for thunderstorms, so just keep that in mind in the future when thunderstorms are forecasted for a seemingly beautiful day. I always lived with my grandparents. My grandfather was away on a business trip in California. I had spent the morning and better part of the afternoon up in New Castle with my grandmother and my aunt(my grandparents’ daughter). The weather was clear and sunny that whole time. After dropping my aunt off at her old house in Frisco(just outside of Ellwood City) in the late afternoon, my grandmother and I headed for home. The weather had gotten cloudy by that time, but it didn’t look like anything ominous or threatening. It just looked like a gray, overcast day. We arrived back at our house in a good sized neighborhood, which is about a mile south of the intersection of PA Routes 65 and 588. My uncle(my grandparents’ son and my aunt’s brother)was up in his room watching “Smokey And The Bandit Part 3”. During this time, a Tornado Watch had been issued for our area. After the movie was over, my uncle was getting ready to go out with a high school friend of his. I turned on the radio to a then very popular Pittsburgh rock station(I’m not sure how popular it is now, as I don’t listen to it anymore). They played Don Henley’s “All She Wants To Do Is Dance”. I had to turn the radio off after that song, because my grandmother and I were getting ready to go back over to my aunt’s in Frisco. My grandmother and aunt were making ceramic coffee mugs that night(my aunt used to hold ceramic classes every week). My aunt came to pick us up, because my uncle was taking my grandmother’s car out to pick up his friend and go about their plans. My grandmother told him to be careful, because she knew about the Tornado Watch. Many years later, my grandmother told me that she had a funny feeling about that night. The weather was still cloudy when we arrived back at my aunt’s house, but after we got settled in, the sun came back out and the sky became clear again as I was watching my faithful cartoons. This was during the very early evening. After a while, I went with my other uncle(my aunt’s husband)into Ellwood City to pick up pizza at the local and still to this day very popular pizza shop. The weather had gotten cloudy again, but still nothing menacing looking. After we arrived back at my aunt’s house, a thunderstorm came in, but even then it wasn’t anything major. It was more like a little thundershower. The storm had been going on for a while when we got the phone call. My first uncle(the one who went out with his friend)called and told my grandmother that him and his friend was in a tornado. My grandmother didn’t believe him at all, because I guess he didn’t sound serious. He was actually laughing about it. My grandmother hung up(I’ll get back to my uncle and his friend)and just a short time later we started hearing about the tornado on my second uncle’s(the one married to my aunt)scanner. The storm outside quickly and dramatically intensified, as it became VERY severe. The sky looked like the end of the world was coming. I became petrified. I was never as scared as I was that night. I said to my grandmother “I thought we couldn’t get tornadoes. You told me tornadoes can’t happen here”. Looking back on it, I guess my grandmother thought that she was telling the truth. I think everyone in the region thought the same thing up until this happened. The funny thing was, my grandmother told me that tornadoes couldn’t happen here just a few weeks before this happened, as I was learning about these sort of things in school. I saw hail for the very first time that night. I saw these big balls of ice come crashing down on my aunt’s front porch. They were the size of golfballs. I asked my grandmother what were these strange things hitting the ground, and she told me it was hail. For years afterward, I got very nervous everytime I saw hail. I went out on the front porch and picked up a handful of the hailstones. I rubbed the stones all over my face. I even ate one. It tasted just like an ice cube. I guess I was fascinated by this newfound thing. Reports of the tornado came steadily over the scanner the rest of that evening. My aunt’s and second uncle’s three month old daughter was oblivious to what was going on. She was just sitting there smiling. My aunt and grandmother actually went about making those mugs at the kitchen table while this nightmare was going on. The mugs were very funny looking and uneven(but usable), as they were very nervous while making them. The raging storm outside finally moved on out right before dark. Before I go on, I’ll tell you what happened with my first uncle and his friend. They happened to be riding by the Big Beaver Plaza(just north of Beaver Falls) on PA Route 18 when the tornado struck there. The plaza sat on a high hillside above the Beaver River, with another high hill across Route 18 from the plaza above railroad tracks. My uncle and his friend were coming out of Koppel and going south towards Beaver Falls. My uncle was driving along in the car with his friend when they saw what they thought was train smoke up on the hillside, and then they quickly realized that this “smoke” was racing down the hillside towards them and the plaza. All of a sudden, the plaza roof came flying towards the car. My uncle and his friend ducked underneath the car seats right before the roof came smashing through the front windshield. Good thing for their quick thinking!! While the roof was smashing into the car, the tornado was spinning the car around like a blurred top (with them still inside!!)before slamming the car into a ditch off the side of the road. The tornado tore through the plaza. My uncle and his friend somehow got out of the demolished car and ditch as the tornado was crossing the river. My uncle said that the river actually parted like the Red Sea. AMAZINGLY, my uncle and his friend got out of it with bruises and embedded glass in their skin, which really felt itchy and jaggy, I was told. It’s AMAZING that they survived, AND without major injury!! As I said, the car was demolished. The plaza was destroyed. Two people died at the plaza, along with many injuries. It was 8:19 PM when the tornado struck the plaza. That’s the time a clock in an unscathed restaurant beside the plaza showed before it went dead. My uncle and his friend fled the scene. They were actually howling and laughing about it. My uncle found a phone and that’s when he called us at my aunt’s. My grandmother did not believe him until we started hearing about the tornado on the scanner, as I said before. Now, getting back to what was going on…As I said before, the storm finally ended right before dark. My grandfather was just arriving back at the old Pittsburgh Airport right after this happened. He had no clue as to what was happening. He saw all these ambulances and emergency vehicles racing towards our direction as he was getting into his car. He was wondering what that was all about. The aforementioned intersection right up the road from our neighborhood was hit very hard. Destruction everywhere you looked. An additional death and many injuries up in that vicinity. The tornado was visible from our neighborhood, but of course, we didn’t see it, because we weren’t there. The neighbors said it was huge. It could have been a multiple vortex tornado, because a neighbor told me that there were two smaller, skinnier funnels on either side of the tornado. All our neighbors said that they heard a very loud roar and they looked outside and there it was moving on by. Our next door neighbor tried to take pictures of it, but they came out fuzzy. Our poor little Yorkshire Terrier was home all alone when the tornado went roaring by. The poor thing was scared out of its mind. We always kept that dog in a playpen. It was so scared that it jumped out of the playpen, which was a very high jump. Had the tornado been just a little further south, our neighborhood would have been in bad shape!! It JUST missed us!! Of course, we were all VERY thankful that we were spared. It was bad enough seeing the devastation just up the road. Getting back to my grandfather, he still didn’t know what was going on as he approached our neighborhood, but he knew something happened. The police was out directing traffic. My grandfather asked them what happened. They told him that there was a tornado. The police allowed him to proceed into our neighborhood. The whole neighborhood was pitch dark(as our power was out for many days after). He came into our black house with our petrified dog running around panicked. My grandfather saw that nobody was home, and he quickly became worried sick about us. He was afraid that we were in it. He called over to my aunt’s to see if we were there. He was VERY relieved. Since my grandmother’s car was demolished, my grandfather had to come and pick us up. He eventually arrived. The sky was crystal clear by that time. The full moon was out shining brightly. It was as if nothing ever happened. We had to go on a pretty good detour to get home, because the road was blocked going to the hard hit intersection up the road from our neighborhood. Anybody who didn’t live in the immediate area of the intersection wasn’t allowed through. We were on a back road going up a hill with the Pennsylvania Turnpike running parallel down below it for a distance. While we were riding along this little road, we came across a house that was laying on its side. It was as though giant hands pushed the house over. We finally made it back home after clearing it with the police. My first uncle(the one who was out with his friend)was back home by that time. His friend’s(the one he was out with)mother brought him home. We all just sat there in the darkness and silence and talked about what happened that nightmarish night. We could hear the police talking on their walkie-talkies. That’s all anybody really talked about over the next few days. We went around and looked at all the damage for many days after. Miraculously, we were somehow able to get my grandmother’s demolished car back into shape and fixed. And right after the fixed car was picked up, it hit a deer and was totaled, and that was the end of the car.

My first uncle has since been in another tornado. On Tuesday, May 24, 1994, he was driving along in a severe thunderstorm on PA Route 8 going south right up above the Butler-Allegheny County line when a small tornado crossed the road right behind his car. The car really shook as the tornado passed by, but fortunately, my uncle and the car were left unharmed.

Getting back to ’85, we were one of the very last places to be hit that day. Most other places in Eastern Ohio and Northwestern Pennsylvania were already hit by the time it got here. I still have the newspaper of that event. I look through it from time to time. I also have the excellent book “Tornado Watch Number 211”, which is about this particular tornado outbreak. The book goes into great detail describing the events of that day. Very interesting and very sad at the same time. I used this book as a guide as I went through Atlantic and Albion on the way to Lake Erie(I go up there as much as I can during the summer months. The Lake is my favorite place in the whole world)two years ago. Of particular interest was Albion. I went through the hardest hit areas of that town, and where one of the most heartbreaking tragedies occurred that day. I’ve gone through there several times over the last two years, as I like to go the long way(PA Route 18)to the Lake and back when time allows.

I used to be scared to death of thunderstorms, but I’ve grown to love them. Personally, I don’t worry about the possibility of that happening again. Conditions were EXTREMELY rare that day. The frequency of something like that happening here is once every million years. It just so happened to occur during our lifetime. You still occasionally hear of tornadoes in Western Pennsylvania, but NOTHING of the magnitude of ’85. That was an unprecedented event, as far as the number and severity of the tornadoes are concerned. It was PA’s deadliest storms.

I think about that day all the time, as it will always be with me. It’s hard to believe that it will be thirty years(!!!!)coming up. Where did the time go?? I’ll close by saying that was LITERALLY one heck of a night!!

I am adding a link to the aforementioned newspaper…http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=QLZAdv6BrvsC&dat=19850602&printsec=frontpage

Included in this newspaper are a couple pictures of the actual Beaver County F3 tornado. You have to go quite a ways into the paper to see the tornado pictures, but if you go far enough, you will come across the pictures.

Additionally, here are five-year anniversary stories in the newspaper…http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=QLZAdv6BrvsC&dat=19900527&printsec=frontpage

One more thing from the newspaper, this being ten-year anniversary stories that includes a picture of the Beaver County tornado on the front page…http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=QLZAdv6BrvsC&dat=19950528&printsec=frontpage

Also, here is a link to my Facebook group page about the outbreak…http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=170524388750

On this group page, there are all sorts of pictures and videos relating to the outbreak, along with extensive coverage from several newspapers from back then. These are the actual newspapers from that time. Also, it’s a place for people to share and talk about their experiences.

In addition, here is a link to the also previously mentioned book “Tornado Watch Number 211″…http://www.amazon.com/Tornado-Watch-Number-Grant-Fuller/dp/0688065902/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1290918027&sr=1-1

Here is  a link to a map where you can actually trace the actual tornado tracks from that day…http://www.tornadohistoryproject.com/outbreaks/the-united-states-canadian-outbreak-1985 However, I do question the accuracy of the tornado tracks depicted on this map, at least for the Beaver County tornado, as that particular tornado’s track was a little further south than what is shown on the map.

Also, here is a link to a map illustrating all the storm reports from that day…http://www.spc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin-spc/getsevereplot.pl?Month=05&Day=31&Year=1985

Here is a link that really details the meteorological aspect of that day…http://nws.met.psu.edu/severe/1985/31May1985.pdf Included in this are a list of the tornadoes, and the time duration for each tornado. In addition, there is also a simulation of what the radar would have looked like when the storms came through Western Pennsylvania that evening.

More blogs about my storm experiences will be coming soon, including the most incredible thunderstorm that I have ever seen, the time I was struck by lightning, and a very rare weather observation, along with other storm stories. Until next time.

Tags: 1985 Tornado Outbreak, Albion, Atlantic, Beaver County, Beaver County Times, Beaver Falls, Beaver River, Big Beaver, Big Beaver Plaza, Book About Tornado Outbreak, Crawford County, Erie County, Facebook, Facebook Group Page, Hermitage, Kane, Links, Links Regarding May 31, May 31, Mercer, Mercer County, Meteorology, Moshannon State Forest, News Coverage, Newspaper Coverage, Newton Falls, Niles, North Sewickley, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Pictures, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Severe Weather, The Pittsburgh Press, The Vindicator, Thunderstorms, Tionesta, Toledo Blade, Tornado Outbreak, Tornado Pictures, Tornado Tracks, Tornado Watch Number 211, Tornadoes, Trumbull County, Weather, Weather Radar, Wheatland