45 years ago today a huge event occurred in my life. June 13, 1976. I was 16 yrs old and it was early summer in Iowa. I lived on a farm in Jordan, Iowa. Our lane was a 1/4 mile long, our house on 5 acres with fields of corn on 3 sides, the town on the other. My sisters and I had been picking strawberries for mom that afternoon and we had just sat down to put our sunburned noses in a bowl of strawberries and ice cream. While mom was scooping she became angry when she glanced out the window. Dad was recklessly driving at highway speed down our long lane. Mom put the spoon down and headed outside to yell at dad. Of course we followed to watch the fireworks!
By the time she made it out the door, he had skidded to a stop and was yelling for us to get outside. He had been fishing on the Des Moines river and said he had been watching a tornado that dropped down. We saw the tornado off in the distance and watched it. (Well, that's what Iowans do.) Mom brought out blankets when it started to rain a few minutes later. Dad's face looked worried after a little while because he could tell it was coming right at us. He yelled at us to get in the car we needed to leave! He backed his truck out, a decision he would regret later, and 5 kids and 2 adults packed into the station wagon.
A neighbor friend of mine was visiting us that afternoon and my 3 siblings and I watched as we sped away from the farm. We drove a half-mile away and parked on the highway. It was starting to tear up the corn field next to our farm. By then it was a massive wall of clouds, that later would be described as a mile wide tornado that Ted Fujita himself named an F-5.
The trees & house in this picture are not in the path, they are quite a ways away from the tornado.
After a few minutes, the car started spewing steam, having blown a hose. Dad decided to go to the nearest gas station about 4 miles away. When we arrived no one was there, the gas station was empty but still open. He couldn't find a water spicket so he dumped a bucket of dirty windshield washer water into the radiator and we raced back toward our farm.
We arrived to see the tornado hovering over our town. There was a grain elevator next to the end of our lane and the tornado had swallowed it up. We could see our farm across the field though. It had been erased from the land. We had a large barn, chicken coop, corn crib, house and garage and all that we could see was what looked like a small shack on the horizon, what had been our kitchen.
My sisters, little brother, friend and I were all crying, wondering aloud what was happening to our friends and family that lived in our small town. As soon as the tornado had moved away, we drove down the street and were in awe of the damage.
We couldn't drive very far into town because debris, dead animals and trees laid across the street, but we stopped and piled out of the car. There wasn't a soul around but us. We were yelling for people we knew lived in the houses that were now basement holes gaping at us. There was so much debris laying around. Slowly people started crawling up out of the holes. Our town had 52 people that lived there. The grain elevator was the only business and it was a huge pile of twisted metal and wood.
We began talking to the people that were beginning to join us on the street when the first deputy arrived to help us. The adults began looking through debris while the kids milled about not knowing what to do.
In the end, no one was seriously hurt. An amazing fact after finding out how many people had been in their basements. The 9 year old son of a friend of ours had been in their basement and had been hit in the head by a brick. His mom needed stitches on her knee and those were the only injuries that day.
The Jordan school building had been on the edge of the tornado, it had been 3 stories tall.
Ted Fujita was a Japanese-American meteorologist whose research primarily focused on severe weather. He created the Fujita scale of rating tornadoes. The Jordan tornado was the first F-5 tornado he studied. As Dr. Fujita described the Jordan, Iowa tornado he said "it was the most intense and destructive tornado I have ever studied". If you'd like to read more information about the 1976 Jordan tornado you can google it to find some great reading on the subject.
We didn't rebuild on the land, and instead rented a farm house located across the field from where we used to live. The house was on the highway where we had viewed the tornado. Nearly everyone rebuilt their homes.
