The Carolinas Tornado Outbreak of 1984

[Teru Teru Bozu]

Hey y'all,

The launch of the sexy new SPC page today (3/28) reminded me of one of the worst tornado outbreaks in my state's history, that of March 28, 1984. Here is a little reminiscence of the event that I found on the Youtubes. OMG, Bob DeBardelaben!

This outbreak and the Enigma Outbreak of 1884 (which produced what is still the deadliest single tornado in NC history) are two of the events I've always wished could have been monitored with the sorts of resources we have available today - Doppler, modeling, and such. The 1984 outbreak was really fascinating in many ways. In particular, the Bennestville, SC - Red Springs, NC supercell/tornado family was probably the most intense tornadic event in the history of either state...high-end F4/borderline F5 damage, two F4 tornadoes on the ground in tandem only five miles apart, and a path width of one of the tornadoes (the one that hit Maxton and Red Springs, NC) being possibly up to 2.5 miles. Unreal.

57 people unfortunately lost their lives in this outbreak. I'm amazed that there weren't more deaths given how strong the tornadoes were, and mostly occurring in darkness in the pre-Doppler era, but OTOH many of the storms hit mostly rural areas (Greenville was probably the largest town to sustain a direct hit).

Here is an excellent page by NWS met Jonathan Finch on the outbreak, including many damage photos and rare radar stills: http://bangladeshtornadoes.org/UScases/032884/032884x.html

Here is another detailed summary of the event by NWS RAH: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~nwsfo/storage/cases/19840328/

[downeastnc]

This is one of the things that turned me into a weather freak, the F4 was rated to have winds to 200 mph by Ted Fujita himself, and would have been on todays scale a possibe  EF5. It missed our house by about 1.5-2 miles we could hear it coming and large pieces of debris were falling in our yard including stuff like the hood of a car. Paper and pink insulation fell from the sky for quite awhile after the event and we knew it was bad but it hit at night and things were very confusing that first night, we had family in the damage path and couldnt get over to them etc. turns out they had minor damage but if you went another couple hundred yards it was nothing but slabs.... 

 

Over the next few days I saw some amazing things as my boy scout troop was part of the cleanup effort, The tornado was huge the damage path was over a 1000 yards wide in places. Luckily I wasnt around when they found one of our school teachers Mrs Creegan  she had been missing several days and was found in a flooded ditch under several trees, she had went to the barn to let her horse out. 

 

Greenville really didnt take a direct hit or it would have been really bad, it hit a somewhat populated area east of town, and never actually got into the city proper. If the tornado had been just 1 mile further west the death toll and destruction would easily have been much much higher, it was really as close as it could have been without hitting several major neighborhoods. 

[downeastnc]

http://www.erh.noaa.gov/mhx/EventReviews/20090327/20090327.php

 

Ironically this event happened almost on the same day and the tornado that was only on the ground for a 1/4 mile picked my 1/4 to do it and missed my house by 200-300 yards I actually walked outside and saw it touchdown and cross in front of me....

 

here are a few pics of the folks across the street that took the hit luckily it was weak...

 

 

 

 

 

[Moonhowl]

Wow, that footage brings back some memories.  I recall the night those tornados hit.  I was in Raleigh out with some friends that night.  I remember some thunder and lightening in Raleigh but nothing severe.  I have a vague recollection of hearing about some watches and/or warnings on the radio east of Raleigh.  Thanks for posting the info. and youtube news clip.  I was out in Denver in 2008 and saw Adele Arakawa doing the news out there.  Hard to believe that was 29 years ago.

[Teru Teru Bozu]

I've always wanted to read Prof. Fujita's analysis of the outbreak...must be lots of interesting info in it. But I did find scans of some of the path maps he drew at the time:

From what I've read, Fujita and others were very interested in the Carolinas outbreak because they think the Tri-State Tornado may have formed in similar conditions ( I.e., a long-tracked tornadic supercell near the center of a surface low). Obviously the Tri-State was stronger with more continuous devastation, but it's still pretty neat that scientists found a modern-day analog in North Carolina of all places.

I remember that outbreak in March 2009... it was sort of a surprise because instability was low (CAPE values below 500), but there was enough shear to produce a few tornadoes. There was another one near Hope Mills that tossed some vehicles on I-95 and was caught on film.

[Teru Teru Bozu]

.  I was out in Denver in 2008 and saw Adele Arakawa doing the news out there.  Hard to believe that was 29 years ago.

Sometimes it's funny to see where various news personalities wind up once they switch markets. I was too young to remember this, but Stuart Scott of ESPN was once a reporter for WRAL. I truly wish I could find this footage again, but after the Raleigh tornado of 1988, he did a story on some people who went looking for pets that people had been forced to leave behind in their damaged houses when they evacuated.

[Moonhowl]

Sometimes it's funny to see where various news personalities wind up once they switch markets. I was too young to remember this, but Stuart Scott of ESPN was once a reporter for WRAL. I truly wish I could find this footage again, but after the Raleigh tornado of 1988, he did a story on some people who went looking for pets that people had been forced to leave behind in their damaged houses when they evacuated.

 

I don't remember Staurt Scott being a reporter for WRAL; I also would love to see some footage, maybe it would jog my memory.  I was at NCSU at the time of the 1988 tornado.  I happened to be up late that night watching Ketucky Fried Movie of all things.  I walked outside of my apartment that night and saw the very storm that was spawning the tornado probably about the time it was leveling the K-mart.  Of course I had no idea about this but was stunned at the frequency of lightning the storm was generating; to this day I have seen nothing else like it.  The thought crossed my mind that the apartment I was in would not hold up well if it was hit by a tornado.  I did not know there was a tornado until the next day.  Some friends and I went driving around Raleigh checking out the damage; ironically I was taking meteorology 101 at the time and had class that day.  Amazing more people were not killed.

 

Also, IIRC, Adele Arakawa was leaving WRAL for a job in Chicago and stayed on a couple of extra days because of the 1988 tornado.

[NCsandhills]

Oh wow, I didn't even know Red Springs got hit with the worst of it.  That's where my girlfriend was born and raised (4 years later anyways).  It's odd how these things seem to follow me around.  I've concluded that with all these near misses I've encountered (really just realized it recently) that I am going to be hit sooner rather than later.  Does anyone else have any personal stories?

 

I also see one that looks like it went right through southern Moore County - Southern Pines/Pinehurst area perhaps? Edit: Oh, I guess thats the Red Springs tornado isnt it.  I thought RS was Hoke County.

[Teru Teru Bozu]

I don't remember Staurt Scott being a reporter for WRAL; I also would love to see some footage, maybe it would jog my memory.

Here he is! Sadly, this isn't the clip where he's up in North Raleigh looking for cats, but he appears at about 7:50 in this video:

Also of note: Greg Fishel with the giant '80s glasses, Donna Gregory with the giant '80s hair, and Bill Leslie actually doing a field report.

[downeastnc]

Stuart Scott doing a winter weather report listen closly to the firstfew sentences he says..gotta love NC, I wonder how much we would have believed the models with it being 82 outside lol,. 

 

[Teru Teru Bozu]

Oh wow, I didn't even know Red Springs got hit with the worst of it.  That's where my girlfriend was born and raised (4 years later anyways).  It's odd how these things seem to follow me around.  I've concluded that with all these near misses I've encountered (really just realized it recently) that I am going to be hit sooner rather than later.  Does anyone else have any personal stories?

 

I also see one that looks like it went right through southern Moore County - Southern Pines/Pinehurst area perhaps?

I don't think Moore Co. got in on the tornado action in 1984, but it was the starting point for the Sanford-Raleigh tornado in 2011. Actually, the Sandhills are a frequent starting point for severe cells in the eastern Piedmont it seems.

Closest I ever came to a tornado was probably in 1992 when a late-night F3 tornado hit Hillsborough, NC, about 15 miles from where I was living at the time. I remember being woken up at about 2:30 in the morning by a heavy thunderstorm, and sneaking into the living room to watch TV (I was 10 years old at the time, so I was sort of afraid my parents would catch me but more afraid of what it was doing outside!). I turned on Channel 11 real quiet to see if the storm had passed. For any of you central NC people, it was Chris Hohmann who had stayed on to do the night shift that night. The next day, we all heard about the damage in Hillsborough and I figured that it had been the same storm that I had woken up to a few hours before. Kind of scary to think how close it had been. You could still see the damage path several years later.

[andyhb]

This is one of the things that turned me into a weather freak, the F4 was rated to have winds to 200 mph by Ted Fujita himself, and would have been on todays scale a possibe  EF5.

 

That's not how the conversion between the scales works, the Enhanced Fujita Scale's estimates are based on the fact that the damage caused by a certain windspeed on the original scale was overestimated (i.e. it doesn't take winds greater than 261 mph to rip a well constructed house off its foundation), so it is the damage that is essentially the comparative trait between the two scales.

[NCsandhills]

I don't think Moore Co. got in on the tornado action in 1984, but it was the starting point for the Sanford-Raleigh tornado in 2011. Actually, the Sandhills are a frequent starting point for severe cells in the eastern Piedmont it seems. Closest I ever came to a tornado was probably in 1992 when a late-night F3 tornado hit Hillsborough, NC, about 15 miles from where I was living at the time. I remember being woken up at about 2:30 in the morning by a heavy thunderstorm, and sneaking into the living room to watch TV (I was 10 years old at the time, so I was sort of afraid my parents would catch me but more afraid of what it was doing outside!). I turned on Channel 11 real quiet to see if the storm had passed. For any of you central NC people, it was Chris Hohmann who had stayed on to do the night shift that night. The next day, we all heard about the damage in Hillsborough and I figured that it had been the same storm that I had woken up to a few hours before. Kind of scary to think how close it had been. You could still see the damage path several years later.

 

You're right - that wasn't Moore County.  It looks like it, lol.  I always get those 2 confused.

[Moonhowl]

After all these years Red Springs is the only place I specifically remembered getting hit by the 1984 tornados.

 

Great to see more footage and the footage of Stuart Scott; still don't remember him from that time but remember all the anchors and of course Bob Debardelaben and cool glasses Greg Fishel.

 

Even though I was not far from the 1988 tornado in Raleigh I actually came even closer to a weak tornado in Asheville of all places.  Odds of getting a tornado here are slim.  This was in 1999 and below is a link to an NWS report on that tornado:

 

http://www.erh.noaa.gov/gsp/localdat/cases/1999/6May_AshevilleTornado/AshevilleTornado.html

[andyhb]

The system/setup that produced this outbreak was incredibly impressive for this region (and quite frankly anywhere).

 

 

[Teru Teru Bozu]

That's not how the conversion between the scales works, the Enhanced Fujita Scale's estimates are based on the fact that the damage caused by a certain windspeed on the original scale was overestimated (i.e. it doesn't take winds greater than 261 mph to rip a well constructed house off its foundation), so it is the damage that is essentially the comparative trait between the two scales.

I've read a couple of items about the Bennettsville-Red Springs tornado that mentioned that some of the damage was high-end F4, and that had it hit more populated areas instead of mostly open fields at its probable peak intensity (near the NC-SC border), it might very well have produced F5 damage. One of those big "what ifs" of tornado history. It's probably the closest a tornado has ever come to reaching F5 intensity in this region that we know of (some of the Enigma Outbreak tornadoes might have come close IMO, but that was in 1884 so who really knows...that's why it's an enigma). Of course, the distinction between F4 and F5 damage is not all that much, and as you said, wind speed estimates are generally not used to figure out the rating anyway.

[Teru Teru Bozu]

Even though I was not far from the 1988 tornado in Raleigh I actually came even closer to a weak tornado in Asheville of all places.  Odds of getting a tornado here are slim.  This was in 1999 and below is a link to an NWS report on that tornado:

 

http://www.erh.noaa.gov/gsp/localdat/cases/1999/6May_AshevilleTornado/AshevilleTornado.html

Oddly enough, 1999 was also the year of the freak tornado that hit downtown Salt Lake City. Must have been a prime year for tornadoes in mountainous areas.

 

EDIT: but I bet you guys get more tornadoes than decent snowstorms, amirite 

[Teru Teru Bozu]

The system/setup that produced this outbreak was incredibly impressive for this region (and quite frankly anywhere).

 

Thanks for the maps! It's incredible how strong that surface low was. That, and the shear was unbelieveable. I wish I could find an old sounding for the present Morehead City, NC upper air site, but here is one taken at Charleston, SC:

 

 

It's worth noting that this was one of only a handful of times in the history of the NSSFC/SPC that some part of North Carolina had been placed under a High Risk outlook. Actually, NWS RAH's CWA has only seen three High Risk outlooks since March 1984.

[andyhb]

That is incredible veering with height along with very potent speed shear...

[Disc]

Thanks for the maps! It's incredible how strong that surface low was. That, and the shear was unbelieveable. I wish I could find an old sounding for the present Morehead City, NC upper air site, but here is one taken at Charleston, SC:

 

 

It's worth noting that this was one of only a handful of times in the history of the NSSFC/SPC that some part of North Carolina had been placed under a High Risk outlook. Actually, NWS RAH's CWA has only seen three High Risk outlooks since March 1984.

That sounding is impressive. Like andy said, the veering and shear shown is incredible.

[Teru Teru Bozu]

Here's an interesting chart from the Penn State reanalysis project:

 

 

What caught my eye was the 500 mb chart. Massive upper-level divergence over the Carolinas at this time, thanks to the vort max over GA/AL/MS.

 

More interesting stuff here, compliments of NWS ILM: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/ilm/archive/CarolinasOutbreak/

[downeastnc]

Thanks for the maps! It's incredible how strong that surface low was. That, and the shear was unbelieveable. I wish I could find an old sounding for the present Morehead City, NC upper air site, but here is one taken at Charleston, SC:

 

 

It's worth noting that this was one of only a handful of times in the history of the NSSFC/SPC that some part of North Carolina had been placed under a High Risk outlook. Actually, NWS RAH's CWA has only seen three High Risk outlooks since March 1984.

The only other one I actually remember is the April 16 2011( my current profile pic )  and it was well founded I dont recall the other ones do you know the dates.....

[Teru Teru Bozu]

The only other one I actually remember is the April 16 2011( my current profile pic ) and it was well founded I dont recall the other ones do you know the dates.....

According to a guy at the SPC who was cited on this page, the three high-risk days for Central NC since March 1984 have been: 3 May 1984, 29 March 1991, and 16 April 2011. These are just the high-risk days for RAH's counties. Other parts of the state may have been under high risk on other days, but they aren't mentioned.

Taking a quick look at the SPC database, the May 1984 event saw lots of tornadoes and wind damage in Georgia and Alabama, but only one tornado in NC (an F1 in the Charlotte area). In March 1991, there were several tornadoes in NC, but most of them were brief F0 or F1 touchdowns. There were two F2 tornadoes in that outbreak - one in Randolph County and another that went across northern Chatham County from just north of Siler City to just west of Chapel Hill (strangely, I don't remember this one too well and it was right in my backyard...I think most of the damage was minor and in rural areas).

There are some notable severe weather/tornado days when central NC wasn't under high-risk: 5 May 1989 (three F4 tornadoes in the western Piedmont, an F3 in Winston-Salem, and an F2 in Durham in the S. Fayetteville Rd. - Alston Ave. area); 23 November 1992 (the Hillsborough F3 killer tornado and a tornado family that went from near Smithfield all the way to Elizabeth City); and the outbreak that produced the Stoneville F3 tornado in 1998, among other active days. I'm not sure what the NSSFC outlook risk categories were in 1974 (I know that what we now call "moderate" risk was called something else back then), but I'm thinking at least part of western NC must have been under moderate/high risk at some point during the Super Outbreak. I mean there was an F4 tornado in Murphy, of all places.

[VeronicaCorningstone]

I remember that night pretty well, considering I was only 8 at the time; and like Downeast, it really made an impact on me and spurred my fascination with weather.  My dad had a heart attack that night and I remember my parents talking about all of the tornado victims coming in, and my dad having to stay in the hallway all night because there was really no room for him (looking back, Pitt was such a smaller hospital at that time - hard to imagine how it handled that volume of injured back then).  After he got out of the hospital a few days later, my uncle and cousins from Raleigh came to see us and we all rode out to the tornado path east of Greenville on 43 (near what is now the DayStar mobile home park - I think back then it was Art's Trailer Park or something like that? Local folks probably remember Art Dellano, the trailer guy ).  The thing I remember most was pink insulation EVERYWHERE.  All in what was left of the trees, in the ditches...all over the place.  The librarian at my mom's elementary school lived in that area and her brick home slid several inches off the foundation.  So many fascinating stories came from those storms...and my (former) fear of storms definitely was brought on by that outbreak.  

[downeastnc]

I remember that night pretty well, considering I was only 8 at the time; and like Downeast, it really made an impact on me and spurred my fascination with weather.  My dad had a heart attack that night and I remember my parents talking about all of the tornado victims coming in, and my dad having to stay in the hallway all night because there was really no room for him (looking back, Pitt was such a smaller hospital at that time - hard to imagine how it handled that volume of injured back then).  After he got out of the hospital a few days later, my uncle and cousins from Raleigh came to see us and we all rode out to the tornado path east of Greenville on 43 (near what is now the DayStar mobile home park - I think back then it was Art's Trailer Park or something like that? Local folks probably remember Art Dellano, the trailer guy ).  The thing I remember most was pink insulation EVERYWHERE.  All in what was left of the trees, in the ditches...all over the place.  The librarian at my mom's elementary school lived in that area and her brick home slid several inches off the foundation.  So many fascinating stories came from those storms...and my (former) fear of storms definitely was brought on by that outbreak.  

We had the stuff raining down at our house.  There was a house on Hwy 33 that was a older farm house that stood between two giant oaks in the middle of a huge farm.....the tornado nailed it but somehow the two oaks survived and in fact are still there. The house was completely gone and then maybe a mile behind the house where the woods started there was a 1/4 mile stretch of pink insulation in the trees so you knew right where the tornado went into the woods at. I will never forget riding down Eastern Pines Rd towards the middle of the damage path where the road was actually pulled up. The houses went from minor damage, to houses with no roofs, then houses with no outside walls then it was slab, slab, slab, slab. for like 10-12 houses in a row just GONE. Not much debris either they just were not there anymore.

 

I saw a dead cow maybe 50 ft up a tree, it also hit a chicken farm and there were dead chickens all over the place. I saw a frame for a trailer wrapped around a tree and at where Day Star was suppose to be I saw cars inside trailers and trailer that were not in the direct path that had cars thrown through them. I was 12 when it hit so I remember it well school was out for like 2 weeks due to all the schools being used for shelters etc.

[Teru Teru Bozu]

We had the stuff raining down at our house.  There was a house on Hwy 33 that was a older farm house that stood between two giant oaks in the middle of a huge farm.....the tornado nailed it but somehow the two oaks survived and in fact are still there. The house was completely gone and then maybe a mile behind the house where the woods started there was a 1/4 mile stretch of pink insulation in the trees so you knew right where the tornado went into the woods at. I will never forget riding down Eastern Pines Rd towards the middle of the damage path where the road was actually pulled up. The houses went from minor damage, to houses with no roofs, then houses with no outside walls then it was slab, slab, slab, slab. for like 10-12 houses in a row just GONE. Not much debris either they just were not there anymore.

 

I saw a dead cow maybe 50 ft up a tree, it also hit a chicken farm and there were dead chickens all over the place. I saw a frame for a trailer wrapped around a tree and at where Day Star was suppose to be I saw cars inside trailers and trailer that were not in the direct path that had cars thrown through them. I was 12 when it hit so I remember it well school was out for like 2 weeks due to all the schools being used for shelters etc.

I have seen some of the photos of the destruction, tree debarking, etc. but I hadn't heard of the ground/road scouring. It's one of those extreme damage types that makes you wonder how strong some of those tornadoes really were.

[downeastnc]

I have seen some of the photos of the destruction, tree debarking, etc. but I hadn't heard of the ground/road scouring. It's one of those extreme damage types that makes you wonder how strong some of those tornadoes really were.

Yeah there was a stretch maybe 50-100 ft where the road surface was gone, and there was little debris or anything all the houses were not just knocked down but 80% of the debris was gone as well. I will post a map of the track I found online the red spot is where I lived at the time and my folks still do. Now imagine that track 2 miles further NW,  it could have been way way way worse not that what it did wasnt bad enough. The spot the road was removed is under the second marker on the track.

 

 

Some local news footage 

 

http://www.wcti12.com/news/Remembering-the-deadly-tornados-of-1984/-/13530444/19512696/-/8i3nghz/-/index.html

[Hugo]

The map doesn't show probably the most interesting spot in the outbreak.  Tatum, SC managed to luck into getting two F4 hits within minutes of each other.  There is no fully original building in the town predating 1984.

 

The town of McColl was also affected by both of the tornadoes and suffered catastrophic damage as well.

[Teru Teru Bozu]

The map doesn't show probably the most interesting spot in the outbreak.  Tatum, SC managed to luck into getting two F4 hits within minutes of each other.  There is no fully original building in the town predating 1984.

 

The town of McColl was also affected by both of the tornadoes and suffered catastrophic damage as well.

 

Yes, this was the spot where at least one of the tornadoes (probably the longer-track one) may have been up to 2.5 miles wide. Here is Fujita's map of the tandem F4s around the NC/SC border. It's not marked on this map, but Tatum, SC would be between Bennetsville and McColl. Also not labeled on the map is the larger town under the "ville" in Bennetsville, which I believe is Laurinburg, NC.