Nice Monday, rainy Tuesday, much cooler Wednesday, warmer for the weekend, but…
57th ANNIVERSARY OF THE CHICAGO’S AREA’S MOST DEVASTATING TORNADO OUTBREAK including the deadly Oak Lawn and Belvidere twisters—-another tornado seriously damaged Lake Zürich
By Tom Skilling (Via Facebook)
I remember being outdoors playing baseball with friends on the ball field at Jefferson Middle School in Aurora when the western horizon filled with the foreboding clouds of that day’s fast approaching squall line. As the clouds raced in, the sky took on a greenish-cast and those of us on the ball field ran for the friend’s house which adjoined the field. We ran down to the basement and turned on the television. Tornado warnings began to air.
What was to follow that day was a horror—with 10 twisters dancing across northern Illinois–three of them assigned F-4 intensities–including the tornadoes which ravaged Oak Lawn, Belvidere and Lake Zurich. 58 died in those storms–including 24 in Belvidere–a toll there which included 13 children who had just boarded a bus as school let out only to be issued urgent orders by the driver to evacuate the bus into an adjacent corn field and fall to the ground.
The April 21, 1967 tornado outbreak remains the Chicago area’s worst and most deadly siege of severe weather to this day—57 years later.
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