This Date in Weather History AccuWeather

This Date in Weather History podcast update from AccuWeather.
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On June 12, 2014 a hail storm that hit Abilene produced more than $400 million in insured losses to vehicles, homes and commercial property. "This is the worst storm damage I've seen in my 41 years in the insurance business," Leroy Perkins of the Perkins Insurance Agency in Abilene, told the largest state insurance trade association in the United States. the storm, packing baseball-sized hail, moved directly south across Abilene pounding the city's north side and downtown area. Commercial buildings downtown received millions of dollars in damage to roofs, windows and structures. Total uninsured losses are also expected to be high, Perkins adds. "Downtown looks like autumn because all of the trees have been stripped of their leaves and many limbs down in the street," Karla Martin with the Taylor County Sheriff's Office said the day after the storm. Hundreds of vehicles, many of them new cars, were declared totaled from the beating they took. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) notes that hail causes approximately 1$ billion in damage to crops and property each year.


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June 11, 2008 marks the tragic loss of 4 teenagers at a Boy Scout camp near Little Sioux, Iowa; 48 more were injured. The tragedy struck at the 1,800-acre camp about an hour north of downtown Omaha. An EF3 tornado, with 145 mph winds, descended on the remote camp, striking and leveling a cabin where campers had sought shelter as warnings of the storm circulated through the camp. A chimney at the cabin collapsed, sending heavy concrete blocks onto the Scouts. This was the worst of the storms that hit the Northern Plains that day. There were also two farms damaged from two different tornadoes, one near Spencer, Iowa and the other near Springfield, Minnesota. A nursing home was also damaged by a tornado in southern Salina, Kansas. There were over 300 reports of severe weather across the nation with 64 of those reports from tornado activity. There had been no basement or in-ground shelter at the camp when the tornado hit. The following year, the Boy Scouts Mid-America Council launched a major fundraising campaign to build emergency shelters at all of its camps. By 2013, two tornado shelters had been built at the camp, and a siren was added. The new structures have concrete walls, steel shutters and doors and emergency power backup, and were built to withstand an EF5 tornado.'
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Benjamin Franklin, inventor of bifocal glasses, the Franklin stove, one of those that wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, ambassador, Governor of Pennsylvania, on June 10 1752 in Philadelphia, flew a kite during a thunderstorm and collected an ambient electrical charge in a Leyden jar, enabling him to demonstrate the connection between lightning and electricity. According to the Franklin Institute, Franklin had been waiting for an opportunity like this. He wanted to demonstrate the electrical nature of lightning, and to do so, he needed a thunderstorm. He had his materials at the ready: a simple kite made with a large silk handkerchief, a hemp string, and a silk string. He also had a house key, a Leyden jar (a device that could store an electrical charge for later use), and a sharp length of wire. His son William assisted him. Franklin had originally planned to conduct the experiment atop a Philadelphia church spire, according to his contemporary, British scientist Joseph Priestley (who, incidentally, is credited with discovering oxygen), but he changed his plans when he realized he could achieve the same goal by using a kite. Franklin and his son “took the opportunity of the first approaching thunder storm to take a walk into a field,” Priestley wrote in his account. “To demonstrate, in the completest manner possible, the sameness of the electric fluid with the matter of lightning, Dr. Franklin, astonishing as it must have appeared, contrived actually to bring lightning from the heavens, by means of an electrical kite, which he raised when a storm of thunder was perceived to be coming on.” Despite a common misconception, Benjamin Franklin did not discover electricity during this experiment—or at all, for that matter. Electrical forces had been recognized for more than a thousand years, and scientists had worked extensively with static electricity. Franklin’s experiment demonstrated the connection between lightning and electricity. To dispel another myth, Franklin’s kite was not struck by lightning. If it had been, he probably would have been electrocuted. Franklin became interested in electricity in the mid-1740s, a time when much was still unknown on the topic, and spent almost a decade conducting electrical experiments. He coined a number of terms used today, including battery, conductor and electrician. He also invented the lightning rod, used to protect buildings and ships. By the time he died in 1790 he was arguably the most famous man in the world.
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The tornado outbreak of 9 June 1984 is among the most important tornado events in Russia’s history because it was associated with substantial loss of life with 400 deaths, and contained one of two F4 tornadoes ever recorded for in that country. Very little information is available on a violent tornado outbreak that swept through areas north of Moscow in the summer of 1984. The Soviet Union had not yet disbanded and few details were leaked to the international media. The outbreak was the result of a series of violent supercell thunderstorms that travelled north-northeast at speeds greater than 50mph. Local newspapers reported that massive hailstones, some over 2lbs in weight, fell over the affected areas. 400 people were killed, with most of the fatalities likely the result of a single tornado that tore through the town of Ivanovo. A French research article describes how the tornado threw cars long distances, lifted a 350-ton operating crane and leveled “steel-reinforced” buildings. According to the same article, the Russians unofficially awarded the tornado an F4 rating, although some of the damage was indicative of F5 strength. Reports describe how the tornado scoured pavement from a highway and hurled a 120,000lb water tank several blocks. Satellite images at the time showed an strong severe weather set up reminiscent of large outbreaks in tornado alley in the US. If the reports are all true, then the outbreak was an unprecedented event and astoundingly violent for an area generally accustomed to tornadoes only capable of inflicting F1 and F2 damage.


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The 1953 Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak was a devastating tornado outbreak sequence spanning three days, two that featured tornadoes each causing at least 90 deaths—an F5 occurring in Flint, Michigan on June 8, 1953, and an F4 in Worcester, Massachusetts the next day. The Worcester storm stayed on the ground for nearly 90 minutes, traveling 48 miles across Central Massachusetts. In total, 94 people were killed, making it the 21st deadliest tornado in the history of the US. In addition to the fatalities, over 1,000 people were injured and 4,000 buildings were damaged. The tornado caused $52 million in damage, which translates to more than $350 million in today’s dollars. These tornadoes are among the deadliest in U S history and were caused by the same storm system that moved eastward across the nation. The tornadoes are also related together in the public mind because, for a brief period following the Worchester tornado, it was debated in the U.S. Congress whether recent atomic bomb testing in the upper atmosphere had caused the tornadoes. Congressman James Van Zandt (R-Penn.) was among several members of Congress who expressed their belief that the June 4th bomb testing created the tornadoes, which occurred far outside the traditional tornado alley. They demanded a response from the government. Meteorologists quickly dispelled such an assertion, and Congressman Van Zandt later retracted his statement.

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