Deadly tornadoes challenge our strength of will

Now is the time to get ready for 7:30 p.m. June 9.

That's the midpoint of Iowa's tornado season, which begins this week. Though tornadoes have been recorded for every month in Iowa, their numbers pick up in April as currents of warm and cool air clash across the spring prairie. During the last 102 years, the month of May has seen 593 tornadoes and June 639; the number slips in July to less than half that number.

Tornadoes also like to strike in the early evening. Half of all recorded tornadoes occur between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.

But tornadoes are more than numbers, even in this day of advanced warning systems and buildings constructed from steel. For as the sky grows deathly green and utterly still, we always glance upward, our hearts beating as we wonder what the next few minutes hold.

It's a moment when we realize we're not entirely in control of our fate.

• • •

Survivors of the 1882 Grinnell tornado, the state's second deadliest twister, recalled the beginning of their storm with vivid detail.

"An hour or more before sunset, the northern sky was hung with conical, downward-pointing clouds, the like of which none of us had ever seen," the local newspaper wrote a few days following the June 17 storm. "After sunset, and even after darkness was gathering, the western sky half way to the zenith was lurid and brilliant and unearthly - an ominous sight which fascinated while it filled one with ill-dread.

"Almost ere the brilliant apparition in the west had disappeared the storm broke. It was accompanied with a roaring like thunder, or perhaps more like rumbling of a dozen heavy freight trains. Chimneys, trees, houses, barns began to fly like leaves. People took to their cellars."

A hundred people died in the storm.

• • •

These days, death from a tornado occurs about once every other year in Iowa. Armed with radios and televisions and storm sirens, people usually can find cover quickly enough.

But sometimes the tornado still surprises us.

Not so long ago, on May 15, 1968, a Charles City woman went to pick up her husband at work. As she reached his parking lot, a man jumped into her car and hollered that she was driving right into a tornado.

Looking up, she saw only a massive black wave roaring toward her.

It was an F5 tornado, the "finger of the God," twisters that are blocks-wide with speeds topping 260 miles per hour.

The tornado lifted her car 15 feet into the air and held it suspended there for several terrifying seconds before setting it back down. Though none of the windows were broken, all four tires had popped. Thirteen people died in the storm, the last time an F5 struck Iowa.

Today, people in Charles City regard the tornado with a tinge of gallows humor. They have to - the twister damaged all of the town's churches but left the bars unscathed.

• • •

Fate has a way of catching us in its whirlwind. We can resist it for a while, but eat the right foods, avoid cigarettes or exercise regularly and the cancer gene's tidal forces still will swirl us away. Or an accident blasts our loved ones and us un-awares, reminding us that we cannot escape. But resistance remains important. Without it, there is no ad-vancement, no progress, only resignation. And without hope, we no longer are human.

• • •

The deadliest twister Io-wa ever saw occurred more than 140 years ago: the Comanche tornado of June 3, 1860.

It tore half way across the state, starting at 2 p.m., not ending until after midnight, sometimes rising into the air and sparing entire towns as it did with Cedar Rapids, but still killing 134 people in its path.

South of Eldora, the tornado utterly destroyed two homes. As one newspaper of the time reported, "The very corn growing in the fields is torn out by the roots, and the ground looks as though the locusts of Egypt had made a devouring march through the country."

The carcasses of livestock lay strewn across the field. A mother died, and two children were so crushed that their features were beyond recognition.

"To look at the ruins of the two houses," the newspaper reported, "one would suppose that it was an utter impossibility for a single individual to escape a certain and terrible death."

And yet, out of 13 people who were inside, seven lived.

They mourned the loss of their loved ones. And they picked up the debris and rebuilt their homes.

They had to. It was the only way to maintain their dignity and strength.

(originally published March 30, 2003)