Recalling memories of 1987 Tornado

Memories of 1987 may dim, but the dread of tornadoes endures

This category F4 tornado struck Edmonton on July 31, 1987.

Edmonton- Black Friday, we called it, July 31, 1987. The day almost 25 years ago that changed the way we look at the sky and how we feel about sweltering heat and humidity.

If you were in Edmonton then, you will recall the strange conditions: odd coloured clouds moving in different directions and an artillery barrage of hail and rain, then the shock of the tornado. It terrorized the city for more than an hour, twisting at more than 330 km/h from south to north, Mill Woods to Clareview, then on to demolish the Evergreen mobile home park.

The twister left 27 dead and a mark on the city’s psyche. The impression is so great that any time the weather gets exceedingly hot and wet, Thomas Taylor — the man who first reported the killer tornado — feels his pulse quicken.

The retired pharmacist lives with his wife Marian on an acreage outside Leduc, right in the spot where the high, dry sky and the hot, wet earth worked together to spawn the 1987 tornado.

At that time, Taylor was like the rest of us. He’d never heard of major tornadoes in Alberta. “You don’t get Oklahoma tornadoes here, this is Alberta — that was the common knowledge,” Taylor says.

Mid-afternoon on Black Friday, Taylor was watching the unusual sky when a funnel cloud touched down in the distance. At once, he alerted the local weather office, though even then he did not believe anything bad would happen.

“It was a very ominous and still and quiet, wisps of cloud going around, and I felt there was something happening. But I didn’t have the experience to realize I should be scared. Now we all know what the possibilities are, that we’re not immune.”

The dread of the tornado still has a hold on us, as seen this past Monday when a huge storm blew into the Edmonton area. Tornado warnings went out. Winds as strong as 100 km/h whipped Taylor’s acreage. “It was blowing the rain around as if it were snow in a blizzard,” he says. “I said to my wife, ‘I think we’d better go down to the basement,’ and she beat me down to the basement and she’s a bit of a skeptic.”

It was the first time a storm has pushed Taylor to make such a retreat, but he wasn’t the only one unnerved.

Twenty-five years on, we’re all on guard. On social media, folks started to post images of suspected funnel clouds in the Camrose and Leduc area. Various levels of alarm and frustration came through in posts and tweets.

“Please don’t tornado this afternoon … please,” John Schneider wrote on Twitter. “And while you’re at it, please stop with the rain.”

Added“Not gonna lie. Pretty terrified right now. #abstorm #tornado #rain #scary.”

But how reasonable is it for us to worry about tornadoes?

The fear is so great that until 1950, the U.S. National Weather Service banned use of the word “tornado” in forecasts, lest it cause panic. Its website explains: “This was in an era when very little was known about tornadoes compared to today, by both scientists and the public at large. Tornadoes were, for most, dark and mysterious menaces of unfathomable power; fast-striking monsters from the sky capable of sudden and unpredictable acts of death and devastation.”

Now science can provide early warning of tornadoes. And Edmonton itself isn’t likely to be hit again, says Dr. Harold Brooks, a leading U.S. researcher on tornadoes. “The chances of Edmonton being hit again are small, just because the chances of any place being hit is not particularly large.”

In one study, Brooks determined that the chance of any one house in tornado-heavy Oklahoma getting hit with a violent tornado is about once every 4,000 years. For Alberta, the odds are about once every 40,000 years, Brooks estimates.

Alberta averages 10 tornadoes a year, with just one of them approaching the ferocity of the 1987 storm.

The province has a few things needed to brew up a killer tornado, such as mountains to create high, dry winds, but it lacks the requisite humidity. “Your moisture at low levels is so low — that is your big limiting factor,” Brooks says.

And yet we worry, based almost solely on one day 25 years ago. I certainly remember the carnage. I was one of the first reporters to arrive on the scene at Evergreen that night, where 15 people died. Where homes had once been there was now an empty lot of refuse. It was so flattened, so stripped down, it was hard to fathom that dozens of dwellings had been there moments before. It’s that scene I recall when the days get hot and sticky in Edmonton.

Follow the timeline of the 1987 tornado in Edmonton

Tuesday, July 21

Temperatures begin to rise, reaching or approaching record levels. Environment Canada issues frequent thunderstorm and several severe-weather watches and warnings (a watch means the potential exists; a warning means a weather condition is occurring or is imminent, based on Doppler radar information). Meteorologists record damaging winds, large hail, heavy downpours and record lightning activity in the 10 days before the tornado.

Thursday, July 30

Two lines of severe thunderstorms cross the Edmonton area, bringing with them damaging winds.

Friday, July 31

5 a.m.: Environment Canada issues a weather forecast for the Edmonton region predicting an 80 per cent probability of thunderstorms. The forecast calls for periods of heavy rain.

11 a.m.: The forecast for Edmonton is updated to include heavy thunderstorms that could produce hail and damaging winds. Central and southern Alberta are identified as the areas with the highest potential for severe thunderstorms.

1:40 p.m.: Thunderstorms that have developed along the foothills near Calgary and Red Deer begin to head toward Edmonton. A severe weather watch is issued for the Edmonton region.

2:30 p.m.: A line of thunderstorms stretches from Ponoka (south of Edmonton) to Sangudo (west of Edmonton). Environment Canada observes the line moving rapidly north-northeastward and forecasts some of the cells in the line to be of severe intensity.

2:45 p.m.: Storm cells continue to intensify. A severe weather warning is issued for Edmonton and counties to the south and west.

2:55 p.m.: A thin, ropelike tornado is spotted near Leduc. A funnel cloud is seen to touch down, but it then recedes.

2:52 p.m.: A special alert tone is sounded on Weatheradio Canada operated by Environment Canada. The warning is broadcast.

2:59 p.m.: The first report of a tornado is received by Environment Canada.

3:01 p.m.: The funnel cloud that receded in Leduc re-forms about three kilometres southeast of Beaumont and begins its 37-kilometre path through the Edmonton area.

3:02 p.m.: The Journal receives the first phone calls reporting funnel clouds southeast of Edmonton. Rookie staff photographer Steve Simon is sent to the area.

3:04 p.m.: The Weatheradio alert tone is sounded again and a tornado warning is broadcast.

3:07 p.m.: A tornado warning is issued to news wire services for Edmonton and the counties of Strathcona and Leduc. Witness accounts peg the tornado between one and two kilometres northeast of Beaumont.

3:15 p.m.: The tornado crosses Ellerslie Road between 34th and 17th streets.

3:20 p.m.: The tornado moves into southeast Mill Woods. Its damage path is later measured to be one kilometre wide. Mill Woods receives the storm’s largest hail, with some stones reaching 10 centimetres in diameter.

3:25 p.m.: The tornado moves through an industrial area north of Whitemud Drive. Industrial buildings are destroyed and trains are derailed. Twelve people are killed and several others are injured.

3:30 p.m.: The tornado warning is updated. The warning is extended to include counties to the east and north of Edmonton. The tornado is spotted northeast of Mill Woods. Journal photographer Simon, on his way to Beaumont to shoot funnel clouds, is fuelling up his vehicle at the Journal’s Eastgate plant in southeast Edmonton when he spots the black twister coming right at him. He stays and shoots the picture that is later used on the front page of the Journal’s special tornado edition on Aug. 1 and numerous times again in other publications.

3:38 p.m.: The Edmonton ambulance service starts receiving calls related to the tornado.

3:40 p.m.: The tornado moves into the river valley.

3:50 p.m.: The tornado follows the river valley east of Clareview.

3:53 p.m.: Witness accounts confirm that farms directly southwest of Evergreen Trailer Park have been hit.

3:55 p.m.: The twister enters Evergreen Trailer Park, where it destroys 133 mobile homes and severely damages 39 more. Fifteen people are killed, 100 are injured. The tornado warning is extended to Sturgeon County.

4:05 p.m.: The tornado dissipates a few hundred metres northeast of Evergreen Trailer Park.

4:55 p.m.: The tornado warning is updated for a second time. A second line of severe thunderstorms approaches Edmonton.

5:30 p.m.: Twenty-seven Journal reporters and eight photographers are scattered across the affected areas.

6:12 p.m.: Mayor Laurence Decore declares a local state of emergency. The 1,700 residents of Evergreen Trailer Park are evacuated.

6:22 p.m.: The City of Edmonton establishes a public inquiry telephone number.

7 p.m.: The tornado warning, severe weather watch and severe weather warning are ended. The risk of severe thunderstorms for the Edmonton area is also over.

9 p.m.: The Journal newsroom is informed that the twister has downed the electrical supply at the Eastgate production plant. Production seems impossible. The Calgary Herald, the Journal’s sister paper, offers to help. The Journal publisher decides to scrap the planned 76-page paper for a 12-page special report on the tornado. The Herald will print the report, and copies will be trucked 288 km north to Edmonton.

Saturday, Aug. 1

2:12 a.m.: Negatives for the aluminum plates of the Journal’s special edition are flown to Calgary on a Learjet.

4 a.m.: One hundred and fifty thousand copies of the special edition are run off the Herald presses and are loaded onto trucks heading to Edmonton.

9:30 a.m.: The first copies of the Journal’s special report are on Edmonton streets.

Sunday, Aug. 2

11 p.m.: Seventy per cent of all evacuated residents at Evergreen return to the trailer park.

Monday, Aug. 3

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney arrives in Edmonton on a visit planned before the tornado. He views the damaged areas from a military helicopter.

Courtesy: The Edmonton Journal