Do you remember a day or week of your life when you decided what career you wanted?
April 7, 1980, 46 years ago today, was that day for me. That was when an unexpected tornado tore through parts of my hometown of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and changed my life.
LIke many who have experienced tornadoes, hurricanes, floods or major winter storms, I remember virtually every detail of that afternoon as vividly as if it happened yesterday.
When riding home after a shopping trip, I'll never forget how dark the sky was to the west. I haven't seen any sky nearly that menacing since. When we pulled into the driveway, I noticed the clouds racing but from east to west. We then received a frantic phone call from a family friend with a view from a hill who saw the tornado headed in our direction. I never saw it, but my sister did. We frantically sprinted down the stairs, took cover under a large, wobbly table, said a prayer, and in about 15-30 seconds the howling wind was over.
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Luckily, our home was spared, but there was damage to a garage catty-corner from our house, and another home with a roof off, but not much other damage on our street, compared to other parts of the city and county. Several folks later told me the tornado either "split" or had multiple vortices. Just over an hour after the tornado, Gov. Lee Dreyfus and various TV news crews were on my street. Years later, I learned the world's foremost tornado expert, the lateDr. Theodore Fujita, personally surveyed the damage.
That tornado was rated F3, an impressively strong tornado for that early in spring in southern Wisconsin. Nobody was killed, but 20 were injured, most of which were in two hard hit mobile home parks. NOAA'sStorm Events databaseincluded a report of a house with four occupants that was lifted 35 feet into the air and "exploded".
For the rest of my childhood, I was deathly afraid of, but also fascinated with, severe thunderstorms. I also decided that I wanted to be a meteorologist some day. That single day changed my life.
During my career, I've spoken with several meteorologists who also decided to pursue their career in weather based on experiencing a storm as a child, including events such as theApril 1974 Super Outbreak, the1983 Northeast Megalopolitan snowstormand Hurricane Charley in 2004.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him onBluesky,X (formerly Twitter)andFacebook.