The November 1989 Tornado Outbreak was a destructive tornado outbreak on November 15 and 16, 1989 across a wide swath of the southern and eastern United States and into Canada. It produced at least 40 tornadoes and caused 30 deaths as a result of two deadly tornadoes. The most devastating was the Huntsville, Alabama tornado, an F4 which killed 21 on the afternoon of the 15th. Eight more fatalities were reported at a single elementary school by a downburst on the 16th in the Town of Newburgh, New York. Several other significant tornadoes were reported across 15 states.
Check out the accompanying Today’s Post photos and articles about the damage in King of Prussia.
Here is an excerpt from the Friday, November 17, 1989 Philadelphia Inquirer article, Fierce Winds Rip Through Area.
…According to the National Weather Service, the unusually sever storm front – the meeting of a low pressure zone from the Great Lakes and a mass of warm, moist air here – passed through the region between 10:15 am and noon, with winds up to 100 m.p.h.
A tornado touched down in the Allendale Road area of King of Prussia at 10:45 a.m…. …In Montgomery County, a tornado raced through the King of Prussia section of Upper Merion, damaging homes and offices and leaving three office works cut from flying glass.
Sheets of corrugated metal and other roofing materials were blown off a large section of a two-story office building at 475 Allendale Rd. and were scattered several blocks across a neighborhood of split-level homes.
William Schmidt, whose house sits directly across Allendale Road from the office building, said he was in a front room when “I just heard what sounded like a lot of hail. Then it got dark and the windows started to smash.” What he had thought was hail turned out to be gravel from the office building roof, he said. Two men and a woman who worked at the office building, which houses offices of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other federal agencies, were treated for multiple cuts at Sacred Heart Hospital in Norristown.
The storm also cut a two-mile swath across the northern portion of Upper Merion Township, where it overturned three construction trailers, tore the roof off an office building, blew down a barn and ripped shingles from dozens of homes….
