The storm that moved through Sunday night and Monday was a strong storm for April. More like one we would expect during the winter months. Storms in April are fairly tame although following some of these cold fronts we can get some blustery thunderstorms and brief tornadoes as we discussed here the other day.
After one such strong cold front 50 years ago today, a tornado was spawned that killed six persons and injured hundreds of others here in Vancouver. Damage was extensive. It was rated an EF 3 tornado with winds upward of 200 mph. It still stands as the deadliest tornado to ever occur in Washington.
I remember that day so clearly, I was in Hazel Dell, and it was a sunny and warm day about 12:30 p.m. I had to drive over to Oregon, so I headed south on Interstate 5. As I approached the bridge, it got extremely dark. The clouds upriver to the east were black as night. As I drove across the bridge, it rained and hailed as heavy as I had ever seen. I couldn’t see the road ahead of me. Then once across the bridge, the sun reappeared. I looked back toward the heights in Vancouver, and it was black, and the landscape obscured. Little did I know what was happening.
We didn’t have all the high-tech meteorological devices and equipment as we do today. We had to rely on primitive radar and mostly ground reports. Once I found out what happened, I returned to Vancouver and made my way to the area of destruction. My wife’s aunt lived in the path of the tornado, and I remember at her house looking at a piece of straw that had embedded itself several inches into a 4-by-4 wooden fence post. I was in awe at the damage this tornado had done. Incredible indeed. We have been lucky all these years since 1972.
