The Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak

The Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak is the second-biggest tornado outbreak on record. Fifty-one tornadoes were involved in the outbreak, which killed 256 people.

Table of contents

1 Introduction
2 It moves east...
3 The Aftermath
4 Suction vortices

Introduction

April 11, 1965 was Palm Sunday, an important day in the Christian religion. Life was going on as usual, with many people attending Palm Sunday services at church. There had been a short winter that year. Some people were eager to enjoy the balmy weather that day. As the day progressed, some people complained about the heat, as the temperature rose to 83° F in some areas of the Midwest.

It moves east...

Around 1 P.M., the first tornado of the day occurred in Clinton County, Iowa. It was an F4 on the Fujita scale of severity. Later in the day, the tornadoes started to become more intense. By the time the storm system got to Indiana, there were several series of killer tornadoes occurring. The first descended from the heavens at around 5:30 P.M. in Koontz Lake, Indiana. This massive F4 would kill 10 and injure 180. The second to hit was in Wakarusa, Indiana. This tornado devastated the Midway Trailer Park. The next would touch down near Goshen, Indiana and moved northeast. The community of Rainbow Lake was destroyed. Only the foundations of homes indicated that there had been life there.

The only F5 tornado of the outbreak formed near Wyatt, Indiana, and moved east-northeast toward the town of Dunlap, Indiana (picture of tornado is above right). This was the infamous "double tornado" that hit the Sunnyside subdivision. Most of the 36 people killed in the double tornado had no warning because the high winds had knocked the telephone and power grids. For the first time in the U.S. Weather Bureau's history, all nine counties in the northern Indiana office's jurisdiction was under a tornado warning. This is called a "blanket tornado warning."

With the telephone lines down, emergency services in Elkhart County, Indiana could not warn the people in Michigan that the tornadoes were headed their way. In Michigan, tornadoes hit as far north as Allendale, in Ottawa County, Michigan, just east of Grand Rapids. Out of the southernmost counties of Michigan, all but three (Berrien County, Michigan, Cass County, Michigan and St. Joseph County, Michigan) were hit, even though tornado warnings most likely went out for these counties as well.

A mile-wide tornado hit in Milan, Michigan, near Detroit. It destroyed the building of Wolverine Plastics (the top employer in Milan), ripping off the roof like a sardine can.

Twenty-five people were killed by an 800-yard tornado hitting near Kokomo, Indiana. Marion, Indiana, and Alto, Indiana was severely impacted as well. More tornadoes moved into Ohio from Indiana, wreaking devastation as they came. A double tornado was sighted near Toledo, Ohio.

The Aftermath

The U.S. Weather Bureau later investigated why so many people died in this event. Radar stations were few and far between in 1965, so tornadoes were identified by the characteristic shape of "hook echoes", but the danger in this storm was identified in plenty of time. The real answer was simple: the warning system failed. The Bureau disseminated the warnings quickly, but the public never received them. Additionally, the public did not know the difference between a Forecast and an Alert. Thus the current Tornado watch and Tornado warning program was implemented because of the terrible toll of the Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak.

Technology has grown tremendously since 1965; warnings can now be spread via cable and satellite television, PCs and the Internet, solid-state electronics, cell phones, and NOAA Weather Radio.

Suction vortices

Dr. Ted Fujita discovered suction vortices during the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak. It was always thought that tornadoes hit one house and left the other across the street completely unscathed because the whole tornado would "jump" from one house to another; however, it turned out that wasn't true. Suction vortices are small tornadoes inside the parent tornado that does all of the destruction.

Note: There were technically two Palm Sunday tornado outbreaks, the first--and more famous--occurring on April 11, 1965, the other occurring on March 27, 1994 which hit in Alabama killing 24 (see The Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak II).