40 years ago: Pennsylvania's deadliest tornado outbreak, only F5 twister
A warm spring day turned to terror for residents of Pennsylvania, Ohio and southern Ontario 40 years ago this weekend.
Friday, May 31, 1985, was a spring day like any other. Trees and flowers were in full bloom, Memorial Day weekend was in the rearview mirror, and most residents of Pennsylvania, Ohio and southern Ontario were looking forward to the weekend.
By the end of the day, however, 44 tornadoes had ripped through the region, killing 89 people. One massive twister moved from Ohio into Pennsylvania, destroying everything in its path, and still stands as the only F5 tornado on the Fujita Scale to strike Pennsylvania. Eight F4 tornadoes were also documented. The outbreak caused unprecedented damage and also remains Pennsylvania's deadliest severe weather outbreak to this day.
An AccuWeather meteorologist remembers the day
Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski was working at AccuWeather on that fateful day.
"I remember the days before the outbreak. We kept ramping up our concern for tornadoes in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. We forecast 'a swarm of tornadoes' the day before, which was very unusual for that area," Sosnowski said.
An aerial photo on June 1, 1985 in Niles, Ohio shows clean-up operations after a tornado swept through destroying and damaging homes on this block on May 31, 1985. (Getty)
"We didn't have cell phones or internet then, so we couldn't watch it happen in real time," Sosnowski explained. "When I got to work around midnight, the mood was somber. The word had come through that lots of people were injured or killed."
5 Boy Scouts miraculously survived an F4 tornado
One F4 tornado tracked 69 miles from Penfield to Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, and destroyed an estimated 88,000 trees in the Moshannon State Forest.
Five Boy Scouts at Parker Dam State Park were lucky to survive in a cabin surrounded by destruction.
Carey Huber, an Environmental Education Specialist at Parker Dam, told WTAJ in 2018 that the destruction around the cabin "looked like matchsticks or toothpicks laying in different directions all over the place.”
Sue Larson stands dismayed among the rubble that was her home in Albion, Pennsylvania, on June 2, 1985. A tornado struck the small northwest Pennsylvania community on May 31, killing nine people. It was one of a number of twisters to hit the Midwest, Northeast, and parts of Ontario, Canada. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Watching the deadly storm on radar
Radar was available in 1985 but only at some television stations and universities. Lee Grenci, a lecturer at Penn State University, was in the Penn State "radar room," watching the Doppler with other Penn State faculty members. It was a black and white screen, but forecasters could hold up a piece of paper to the screen to see the locations of towns and roads.
A WSR-57 Doppler Radar image of one of the storms producing the F4 tornado in northern Centre County on May 31, 1985. The tornado's hook echo is clear and the twister's track is shown in orange. (PSU/AccuWeather)
They were awed by what they saw, a supercell thunderstorm with a curled hook echo north of State College, Pennsylvania, home to Penn State University (PSU).
"[We] were mesmerized by the radar, and, out of the dead silence, [PSU Professor] Greg Forbes said, people are dying right now. I never, ever forgot that moment," Grenci said.
In this May 25, 2011 photo, Tom Stanton, a former councilman and mayor of the community, stands by the memorial dedicated in honor of the victims of the devastating tornadoes of May 31, 1985, in Wheatland, Pa. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
Storm left scars on the land
Stephen Corfidi of the Severe Local Storms Unit of the National Severe Storms Forecast Center, as the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) was known in those days, was amazed by the strength of the F4 twister north of State College.
"Eight years after the event, the path of the nearly mile-wide monster storm remained nearly devoid of trees — in stark contrast to the richly green forest surrounding it," Corfidi said.
The storm's scar was visible on satellite maps until the early 2000s.
An infamous and rare video of the F5 tornado
The strongest storm of the outbreak, an F5 tornado, began in Portage County in Ohio and tracked across Trumbull County into Mercer County, Pennsylvania. Home video cameras were rare in those days, but one resident filmed the infamous storm.
For the 40th anniversary of the outbreak, WFMJ talked to Ron Alfredo, who took the rare video of the tornado in Hermitage, Pennsylvania. After seeing unusually large hail, he said, the tornado came into view. He kept the video rolling.
"I thought it was papers flying," Alfredo said of swirling debris that he later realized was buildings being torn apart.
A dozen killed in Ontario
In southern Ontario, 14 tornadoes left massive damage north of Toronto, killing 12 people. Three tornadoes were rated F3 on the Fujita Scale.
"The tornado hit so hard that in some places, there was simply nothing left," CBC's Vicki Russell said at the time.
