Severe weather this week comes on 50th anniversary of deadly 1974 tornado outbreak

Bill Estep
·3 min read

As Lexington and other spots dealt with power outages and other damage from severe weather this week, some people in Kentucky were thinking back 50 years to another disaster.

On April 3 and 4, 1974, a total of 148 tornadoes raked 13 states from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, including Kentucky, killing 335 people and injuring more than 6,000, according to the National Weather Service.

The death toll in 1974 likely would have been higher because a violent tornado that wiped out much of Xenia, Ohio, hit several schools, but there were no students present at the time.

The Scott County town of Stamping Ground lay nearly leveled the day after being hit by a tornado on April 3, 1974. April 3-4, 2024, mark the 50th anniversary of a super tornado outbreak that saw 148 twisters touch down in 13 states. By the time it was over, 330 people were dead and 5,484 were injured in a damage path covering more than 2,500 miles. Fortunately no one was killed in Stamping Ground.

Deaths totaled more than 70 in Kentucky, behind only Alabama with 86 people killed, according to a report the weather service issued soon after the disaster.

That number was not eclipsed until tornadoes that hit Mayfield, Bowling Green and other cities in Western Kentucky in December 2021 killed more than 80 people.

The onslaught of tornadoes 50 years ago has been called the Super Outbreak.

It was the first on record to produce more than 100 tornadoes in a single 24-hour period, according to a weather service report issued for the anniversary.

The storm complex also spawned the most EF-5 tornadoes in one day, at seven. One of those hit Xenia.

Damages were estimated at the time at $600 million — equivalent to $3.7 billion now.

In Kentucky, Brandenburg was among the hardest-hit locations with more than 30 deaths, including several children who apparently were playing outside after school, according to the National Weather Service.

But there was damage, death and injury across the state.

Alice Yates, who was 19 at the time, said she was with her mother, Rea Yates, at their home in Frankfort when a tornado approached about 5:15 p.m. on April 3, 1974. Her father, Joe Yates, was at work in Frankfort.

Residents and volunteers help search for possessions to salvage from a building in Stamping Ground, Ky., after much of the town was leveled by a tornado Wednesday April 4, 1974.
Residents and volunteers help search for possessions to salvage from a building in Stamping Ground, Ky., after much of the town was leveled by a tornado Wednesday April 4, 1974.

Yates scrambled under a bed and her mother laid in the floor beside her. The tornado ripped their house apart and sent them “tumbling like rag dolls” amid the roaring wind and snapping wood, said Yates, now 69.

“You can’t describe the roar, the vibration,” said Yates, who lives in Versailles.

Yates said she was thrown some distance from the house and briefly knocked unconscious. When she came to, she walked over debris to a neighbor’s house for help.

She suffered cuts and bruises, but her mother was badly hurt, with internal injuries and a broken leg that left her with a limp the rest of her life.

The family later bought a house with a basement, Yates said — something her mother insisted on.

The National Weather Service said 120 homes were destroyed near Frankfort that day.

The outbreak was the catalyst for improvements in public awareness and an overhaul of the National Weather Service to modernize the agency’s “observational infrastructure” and office structure, the agency said.

The weather service also added new degree requirements for meteorologists and hydrologists.

Training in those systems “ensured more rapid detection of storms and led to the modern era of delivering timely forecasts and warnings to the public,” according to the agency.

The super-tornado outbreak of April 3 and 4, 1974, was the worst in U.S. history, with 148 twisters touching down in 13 states. When it had ended 16 hours later, 330 people were dead and 5,484 were injured.
The super-tornado outbreak of April 3 and 4, 1974, was the worst in U.S. history, with 148 twisters touching down in 13 states. When it had ended 16 hours later, 330 people were dead and 5,484 were injured.