Belvidere, IL (April 21,1967) (submitted by Terry; added on 8/20/2000)
We were living near Cherry Valley, in northern Illinois. Of us four siblings, three were home from school, sick with the flu. Only the youngest brother, Marty, who was 11 at the time, had gone to school that day. About 3:00 in the afternoon, a thunderstorm blew in. Riding home, Marty managed to get his bicycle under an overpass as pingpong ball sized hail began to fall. It stopped after a couple of mnutes and he began pedaling for the nearby truckstop. At the house, my mom watched anxiously out the picture window at the pause in the storm, knowing that Marty and my Dad were both on their ways home. Suddenly the hail started again and it got huge, bigger than baseballs, then as big a softballs or grapefruit - lots of them. It looked like thousands of snowball coming from the sky. Some of them collided with each other on the way down and exploded in what looked like snow. They hit the ground so hard, they buried themselves. Grass remnants were later found on the second story eaves. It was an in-credible, terrifying sight. We were frozen in fear. The noise of the monster hailstones hitting the roof was deafening. I then saw the picture window bow. It seemed like slow motion as the glass actually curved and the window exploded outward. That roused my mother to scream "Basement - basement, NOW!' and she herded us quickly downstairs. We sat in the family room, glaring fearfully at the ceiling. The din seemed to go on forever. I just knew that the hail would come through the roof eventually and then through the upper level floor and then smash us to bloody pulps on the basement floor. It didn't seem possible that the wooden house could stand up to such a beating. I have never been so scared in my life!

Meanwhile, Marty had made it to the truckstop. He dropped his bike and ran inside, just as the hail resumed. Right behind him, a converible screeched to a halt at the door. A man and a woman jumped out of the car doors. Each snatched two small children out of the back seat and ran into the building as hailstones tore through the ragtop. All six made it safely inside. The huge plate glass windows of the restaurant and the large lighted letters of the Conoco sign were not so fortunate.

After an eternity, the hail stopped and it was time to survey the damage. Marty's bicycle was almost unrecognizable, a couple of twisted spokes and some rubber scraps were all that was left He walked the rest of the way home, stumbling over piles of hailstones and slush. At the house, we were in shock. Over a area of one square mile, there were no more lawns or shrubs. There were no windows or roofs. Wood splinters, shingle fragments, and broken glass lay mixed with the ice on the ground. Amazingly, no one had been seriously hurt. We had no electricity, but turned on a battery powered radio to try to get some news. The radio station, which was located less than five miles to the west of us, continued to play music, make small talk and give pleasant weather forecasts. Nothing was said about what had just happened. It seemed like the Twilight Zone. My dad arrived home and was astounded at the damage. "What on Earth happened here?" He had seen or heard nothing of the storm. About thirty minutes after the hail had stopped, a woman called into the radio station and the call was broadcast live. She had just driven through Belvidere, Illinois, a town seven miles east of us. She had stayed on the highway until she could get to a phone. She said something horrible had happened there - severe damage to another truckstop that she had driven by and what looked like bodies laying in the parking lot. She couldn't understand it though, because the sky was clear and the sun shining. She suggested someone go to Belvidere and find out what had happened. That was the first we heard of the terrible tragedy that occurred just to our east.

The tornado, which has been now estimated to be an F4, hit Belvidere just as the factories and schools were letting out for the day. My uncle, who worked at the Chrysler plant and one of his buddies were sitting in his car waiting for their shift to begin. They saw the funnel cloud approaching and raced safely into the factory. The tornado took off the corner of the building and picked up dozens of cars out of the parking lot. They could be seen for weeks after the storm, looking like crumpled up balls of tinfoil in the surrounding cornfields. I don't believe that there were any fatalies at the plant, but there were at the nearby grocery store, which was totally demolished. The worst scene was the schools. The children were just boarding the school buses when the storm hit and it picked up buses and tossed them around like toothpicks. Some kids were on the buses and some hurrying to get on in the driving rain. Twelve children and a bus driver were killed. In all 27 people died in Belvidere. The storm moved on to Oak Lawn, where another thirty died. Over 300 people were injured. My mom, who worked nights at one of the major hospitals was called in on her night off, as were all available hospital personnel in the area. She told us of seeing a little boy, whose whole body was purple - one big bruise. He died. The ambulances came from all over to help. Their sirens wailed all night long. It was a very sad time for everyone.

There had been no warnings. Once the storm had cut the communcation lines, no one outside the immediate area of destruction even knew what happened. I greatly appreciate the modern weather monitoring and predictive technology that we now have. It wasn't available back then and many lives were changed forever.

Indiana, USA (April 3, 1974) (submitted by Andy; added on 8/20/2000)
I was 7 years old and playing on our front porch in Indiana. I heard a buzzing sound, much like that of a utility pole with a transformer on it. I looked up to see a large funnel cloud almost directly above me, it was moving from the south west to the north east..it was spinning very quickly with ugly black and dark gray clouds in it...I remember it wobbled awkwardly..the top would move right and left, and the bottom would just kind of jerk along to keep up. About a half hour later a huge storm hit our area, one of the worst I've ever seen. I can remember very well how the sky and the air turned bright green, everything seem to have a bright green outline around it, even my hands. Of course, that was the day of the super outbreak of twisters...here in Indiana there were 21 twisters that day, the town of Monticello, 42 miles away was the hardest hit in my area.

Stillwater, New York, USA (May 1998) (submitted by Tim; added on 9/23/2000)
The Stillwater Tornado was rated a strong F3-Weak F4 tornado. It struck on Sunday afternoon. NWS had issued statements starting on Friday Afternoon mentioning storms on sunday. On saturday the potential for Tornados was mentioned. On sunday Morning, NWS mentioned potential for deadly storms.

As an Officer in the FD, we made sure that crews were available starting sunday morning. The NWS issued Tornado Warnings (leadtime about 40 minutes) around midaafteroon for Stillwater area. When the Warning was issued, I responded to our Main Station. About 10 minutes later, it started to get very dark and very still. Thunder/Lightning was off to the west.

Our first call was to a house hit by lightning. There was heavy rain at the time. As we responded to the call, the rain seem to increase and temperature seem to drop quickly. After arriving at the home, it had indeed be hit by lightning but there was no fire. The rain seem to ease up...to just very heavy rain. Upon walking out of the home, having been inside for about 5 minutes, I noticed it had lightened up somewhat. The sky seem to be an errie green/pink hue to it, and the rain was light to moderate.

We noticed the funnel cloud to our south. We could only see a little bit of the top of the funnel. It looked more like a disk then a funnel. Treeline blocked our view, and we were on a plateau. About 500-700 feet above the river valley. The Funnel/Disk was white. It did not appear to have any visible movement to it. Lightning was in the area, but not near the tornado. We were about 2 miles north from the touchdown area. We could not get a good view of the tornado, until we responded into the touchdown area. when we could see the storm off to the east.

We never had any idea we were as close to the storm as we were. There was no sense of movement to the storm until it was past us. The storm was likely wrapped in rain, around the perimeter. We could not hear the sounds of the damage as it occured. Many interviewed afterward, mention not hearing any sound until just before it hit. I do think that because of the large lead time, many were looking for storms and this prevented any deaths (0 Deaths, about 30 serious injuries and about 30 bandaide injuries.) In stillwater, the storm was about 1/2 mile wide.