Tornado Watch #211

Collectors Book.  The 1985 Tornado Outbreak

From Publishers Weekly
On May 31, 1985, 41 tornadoes struck an area south of Lake Erie and north of Lake Ontario. Small towns on the borders of Ohio and Pennsylvania were leveled; there, in just over four hours, more than 2000 homes were destroyed, 75 people lost their lives and more than 1000 were injured. Fuller, author of We Almost Lost Detroit, has written a spellbinding account of that fateful day. The story begins in Kansas City, at the National Severe Storms Forecast Center, where meteorologists chart weather patterns for the country. Their information is forwarded to regional weather stationsin this case, to Cleveland and Pittsburghthen to satellite stations (Youngstown, Erie), which are responsible for specific counties. Early in the day, there was a threat of severe thunderstorms in late afternoon for southern Ontario, eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania and New York. At 4:25 p.m. EST,Kansas City issued Tornado Watch #211. Was anybody listening? The first tornado struck 45 minutes later. Fuller takes us to some of the communities for an "on-the-spot" report of the devastation and its aftermath. First serial to Reader's Digest.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Tornado Watch Number 211 by John Grant Fuller (1987)

One reviewers opinion: On May 31, 1985, a whirling melee of cloud and debris descended upon several unsuspecting towns along the countryside of the Ohio/Pennsylvania border. What had started out as a humid but quiet day in late spring turned quickly into one of the worst tornado outbreaks ever recorded in this nation. Very few people expected it, or even knew what to do when it hit. There was warning by weather forecasters--though not much--but most people refused to heed it anyway. The results were mass casualties and devastation. In this suspenseful non-fiction thriller, John G. Fuller (author of The Ghost Of Flight 401) keeps the disaster story-lover on-edge for most of the book, as he describes--in well-researched detail--the way events unfolded for both weather watchers and citizens alike on that day. Fuller even takes the reader into the lives of some of those affected and makes one feel as if (s)he, too, is present in the area for which the National Severe Storms Forecast Center has just issued Tornado Watch #211. Aspiring news writers should read this book to see how cataclysmic events should be covered (but frequently are not). Anyone who is a meteorologist, weather watcher, fire chief, civil defense director, or concerned citizen should want this book for his/her personal library.

 

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