What Stands in a Storm: A True Story of Love and Resilience in the Worst Superstorm in History

by Kim Cross

Much has been written and said about the goodness of the people who responded in various ways after the winds died down. Those people can never be repaid, never be thanked sufficiently. People whose names I did not know sweated and even bled in my neighborhood, for strangers.

In times of trouble, the things that tear our world apart reveal what holds us together.

A radar cannot “see” tornadoes.

The only way to confirm a tornado is for a human to lay eyes on it. This, in meteorology, is called ground truth. It is one of the most valuable tools meteorologists have today.

Unfortunately, at the peak of Finley’s career, forecasting got political and a hot debate raged about whether the weather service should be under military or civilian control. Ultimately his superiors terminated his tornado studies in the late 1800s and ordered him to halt all predictions, discouraging use of the word “tornado” on the grounds that it would incite public panic—a harm they judged greater than injuries and damage inflicted by the storm itself. The word remained verboten for decades, and tornado research and forecasting fell into a dark ages of sorts until the late 1940s.

“Tornadoes have been observed on every continent and in every American state at every hour of the day and in every month of the year.”

“I have never seen devastation like this,” the President said before he left Tuscaloosa. But in the devastation he noticed something else, a universal truth that echoed across tragedies.

“When something like this happens, people forget all their petty differences . . . and we’re reminded that all we have is each other.”

In the South, food and tragedy are sisters. And while the instinct to feed others in a crisis may not be strictly southern, what they prepared, and how they did it, may be the region’s finest recipe.

Nature holds mysteries and power we barely fathom. It can, and will, inflict unimaginable suffering. But the same forces that destroy the walls that protect us also bring down the walls that divide us. And when everything else

is stripped away, what stands is a truth as old as time: The things that tear our world apart reveal what holds us together.

April 2011 became the most active tornado month on record, with 757 tornadoes confirmed throughout the United States. Two hundred of them occurred on April 27, the most ever recorded in a single day. It is tricky to compare outbreaks, which have some similarities but inevitable differences, but many experts consider the April 25–27 outbreak the worst on modern record,

Tornadoes are rare. Only a small fraction of thunderstorms produce them, and EF4 and EF5 tornadoes are exceptionally rare, accounting for less than 1 percent of all twisters. Only one EF5 is recorded in the United States in a typical year. In 2011 there were six. Four struck on April 27. Statistically, an event of this magnitude occurs only once or twice a generation. But it can, and will, happen again. And the next one might be bigger.