Since I”m on the topic of rare photos of historic tornadoes (see my recent post on the Palm Sunday Tornadoes), I might as well show you this one of the Xenia, Ohio, tornado. It”s another shot that you just won”t find elsewhere on the Internet.\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nI scanned this from the one year commemorative edition of the Xenia Daily Gazette, printed on April 3, 1975. Some years ago I contacted the Gazette to inquire whether they had any coverage of the event in their archives, and was told that they had one copy left from the original 1975 print run, as well as some twentieth anniversary editions printed in 1994. Of course I snapped up that last 1975 copy, as well as one from 1994. They”re now a treasured part of my tornado memorabilia. The paper is old and brittle, but I still take it out and read it now and then.\r\n\r\nAgain, you won”t find this photo elsewhere on the Net, though I”ve seen some other fabulous photos on Homer Ramby”s website and on Scott Koerner”s remarkable 1974 Super Outbreak site. Both sites also contain video clips, and Ramby”s includes an actual audio recording of the Xenia tornado as it approaches and ultimately destroys the residence where the cassette recorder was taping.\r\n\r\nReturning to the photo in this post, the quality may not be the best, but there”s something about these old, black-and-white images that captures the sheer horror of historic tornado events in a way that full color photos just don”t convey. The white frame house sits intact in the foreground, but black devastation looms imminent in the background, filling the sky. Did the house escape destruction, or was it part of the carnage? The newspaper doesn”t say. Either way, it”s one heck of a photo of a tornado that ranks as the baddest of the bad, in an outbreak that to this day remains unparalleled.
