The most memorable weather day of my life is April 3, 1974. The Today Show always presented a Skywarn map. It was a representation of the Sevele Local Storms Unit severe thunderstorm outlook. Alabama was included in the huge area that was forecast to see severe thunderstorms that extended from northern Louisiana to southern Michiagn and eastward to West Virginia, western North Carolina and western North Carolina. It would be a brilliant outlook.
I was 12 years and in the 6th grade. My teacher was a beautiful lady named Judy Thornton. It was a Wednesday, partly cloudy and hot. Way too hot for early April. It was windy, also. Mrs. Thornton decided we should have class outside, which everyone loved. I was too pre-occupied with the rushing wind and the puffy cumulus clouds to enjoy. Knowing that I was fascinated with the weather, Mrs. Thornton asked me what was up with the unseasonable warmth and wind. I told her that we were going to have an unbelievable afternoon and night of severe weather. From then on, my teachers never doubted when I said the weather was going to be bad.
We had not even gotten home when Jefferson County went under a tornado warning. The storms passed over without major incident, just some large hail at our house, but a tornado was reported near Concord. As the afternoon waned, the atmosphere took on a mournful, ominous feel. Frightening reports around 6 p.m. Tornadoes on the ground in Lawrence County. “Big and powerful. Taking everything in their path.†Not good. WDJC and Ben Cleary and Wayne Wallace were my constant companions as I listened intensely for bulletins. WFMH in Cullman was also an amazing source of weather information, even when power went out at their studios. But unlike today, real information was hard to come by.
I clearly remember Wendell Harris interrupting programming on Channel 13 with a bulletin that fatalities were mounting in Northwest Alabama. But the scariest reports started around 9:30 p.m. A huge severe thunderstorm in Marion County had three well defined hook echoes in it. At 9:04 p.m., one of the most powerful storms ever to strike Alabama roared straight through the town of Guin.
Just before 10 p.m., the announcers at WFMH were broadcasting from their transmitter, observing the storm to their northwest. They read a bulletin from the Weather Service that stated that the storm over Marion County was moving at over 120 mph! I had always heard that the faster the storm was moving, the more severe it must be. Moving at double anything I had ever heard of. Just before 10:30 p.m., there was a report that a tornado was bearing down on the Huntsville Decatur Jetport. At 10:45 p.m., there was a report that the NWS Huntsville was abandoned and the Birmingham weather office was taking over warning responsibility. My dad got home from work at 11:30 p.m., and I was in a tizzy. The report had just been received that Guin had been struck. From the sound of things, the world was officially coming to an end. It was a terrible, terrible night.
