The 1944 Tornado in Greene County

I was sorry to read this morning about the author of the “Ten Mile Creek Country” blog. Only recently one of his older posts caught my eye. That post includes a brief summary about tornadoes that struck Southwestern Pennsylvania on the evening of June 23, 1944. I don't remember having seen before the photo in that post showing the devastation at Chartiers (Lat. 39.961N, Lon. 80.051W). Over the years I probably heard bits and pieces about twisters, but didn't connect them. I recall seeing 30 or 40 years ago a map of paths of deadly tornadoes across the entire country. There were just a few short lines in Southwestern Pennsylvania—anemic compared to the major events farther west. That particular graphic may have been misleading.

Since coming across the “Ten Mile Creek Country” post, I've been searching online for more information. The closest thing to the original surveys is the Monthly Weather Review report on tornadoes during 1944. That report references a survey by the Weather Bureau in Pittsburgh. The tornado in Greene County was part of a path of destruction that extended 80 miles from near Wellsburg [between Wheeling and Steubenville, on the West Virginia side of the Ohio] to western Maryland. That path was flanked by three parallel paths: two on the north and one on the south. According to MWR, “Observers who witnessed the paths of the tornadoes from the air stated that there were some meanderings but the general direction was from northwest to southeast, and the paths looked as though huge rollers had flattened everything in their way.” It should be noted that before crossing into Greene County, the storm would have passed over very rural parts of Washington County. Then near Chartiers, it would have encountered surface elevations rapidly fluctuating from about 800 feet along the South Fork of Tenmile Creek to over 1100 feet on the surrounding hills.

The Pennsylvania Weather Book has a description of this event. Some of the details, including the F4 rating, are apparently based on a review published by Grazulis in 1993. The online follow-up by Grazulis, The Tornado Project, lists the Chartiers tornado among the deadliest tornadoes in Pennsylvania. I don't have access to the 1993 publication, and thus no knowledge about its conclusions regarding path length. But it is interesting that the associated time (6:11 pm) provided at the online site corresponds to the start of the path at Wellsburg. In Greene County the time was, according to online newspaper reminiscences, "a little after 8 p.m."

A more recent post on the “Ten Mile Creek Country” blog alerted readers to the availability of aerial photographs covering Pennsylvania. Comparing a photo of the area taken 5 years before the tornado with one taken 14 years after, you can see which structures were destroyed. Online newspaper reminiscences record that one of the structures destroyed was the company store. This might explain an observation from Hiller, 7 miles to the northeast, where strips of clothing fell from the sky (newspaper summary at Glenn Tunney's site). The terminus of the debris would seem to offer pre-radar confirmation, if it were not already obviously the case, that the Greene County tornado was associated with a large, long-lived, rotating supercell.

Arizona's New Law

(aka SB1070, “Arizona's Immigration Law”)

Besides moral concerns by religious leaders and potential legal problems with the new law, there is the simple question of whether the new law makes sense—whether it is a valuable addition. You only have to read the first paragraph of SB1070 to understand what the problem is. The preamble states that the intent of the law is “attrition through enforcement.” It is not about attritting violent crime or drug smuggling, trespassing, vandalism, theft. Things that have been cited as “reasons why Arizona had to do something,” the new law does nothing about. By diverting scarce resources, it may even worsen those problems. If the total number of people in Arizona without proper documentation were to be reduced by half, while at the same time the volume of illegal drugs passing through Arizona, the incidence of violence on both sides of the border, and the number of desperate migrants dying in the desert heat were all to double: the authors of this law would claim success. It is truly an absurd law.

The Bridge on the River Mon

Pennsylvania is building a link in the Mon-Fayette Expressway around my old hometown. The construction is mostly “out in the country.” Some might well question how this investment will be paid for, or whether it is the wisest priority for infrastructure. Leaving aside those concerns, it is an amazing engineering and construction project.
Driving up-river from Bridgeport (see July 4 post), trees eventually close in on both sides of the highway. The old industrial site of Alicia has become a forest. Though signs warn of construction ahead, it takes awhile for a glimpse of the columns to appear through the trees. At the construction site there is a clearing on the left. Immediately you drive back into the forest.
The picture below was taken from across the river, on the Washington County side, looking back towards Fayette County on the other side. Bridgeport and Brownsville are on the far side, 2 miles to the left.

The foreground park is a recent development, having been occupied for decades by a large slate (coal mine refuse) dump. Near the middle of the picture, above the park bench, the trees are on the far side of the river; the dark horizontal swath marks the rail line. Hidden from view is the mouth of Rush Run, which reaches the far side of the Mon River through a large culvert under both the highway and the railroad. On hot humid days deep down beside Rush Run it would be easy to imagine being in a tropical jungle. Rush Run Hollow extends back to the right. Turning attention to the pillar with several layers of scaffolding, and the hillside behind it, Alicia Heights Road climbs steeply up that hill. There is a good view from there looking back down on the construction site. There is a similar view from the construction site's web camera, which is located near the right edge of the photo above. A half mile beyond the hilltop is Telegraph Road, where there will be an interchange. Beyond that interchange is construction on an equally impressive complex of bridge structures that will carry the Expressway about 100 feet above Bull Run Road and about 200 feet above Dunlap Creek.
A little over 100 years ago Rush Run Hollow was briefly the site of another bustling transportation corridor. John K. Gates in The Beehive Coke Years: A Pictorial History of Those Times, includes on page 10 a picture of “Sarah, the town that almost was.” Gates relates, “A railroad spur line was laid down from Brownsville - a distance of several miles.” The spur line ran up through Rush Run Hollow, climbing 350 feet in a little over two miles. You can still see the grade at several places in the hollow. At the end of the spur the construction was far enough along that “Sarah” was looking like a typical mine town, complete with housing for the workers. But then, Gates continues, “... someone discovered that the coal didn't belong to Frick. The tipple was demolished, the hole [mine shaft] filled in, all the buildings (including the houses) were torn down, and the rail line removed.”

The Monsoon Is Here

About an hour ago I took a walk around the block, and felt the first few drops of this year's monsoon. It's still 97F at my house, which is only 7 degrees off the afternoon high. Whatever the low-level dewpoints have been, it doesn't matter. The atmosphere is unstable enough, although the very light showers have now dissipated as fast as they flared up over an hour ago.

In recent years the monsoon onsets have often come with odd, freakish upper-air patterns. This year is different. It is straightforward. The subtropical ridge is setting up to the north, putting us in southeast flow.

Last week was equally straightforward. Last Thursday afternoon I was briefly in moderate rain while driving along Broadway near Alvernon. But then we were still in the westerlies--not the monsoon.

You don't need an artificial index to define when the monsoon starts this year. It's here, today.

Bridgeport

A couple of weeks ago I visited in Pennsylvania. It's always hard to remember how oppressively humid some summer days can be back there. What Tucson considers monsoon levels of moisture, they describe as refreshingly dry.

On one of those sunny days with dewpoints well into the 60's, I drove through the Bridgeport section of Brownsville. Traces of the former industrial glory continue to fade. One portion of Bridgeport was the Bridgeport Patch: mine-company houses built between the railroad tracks and the river. About 10 years ago most of the houses were still there, including the one where my Dad grew up. Now it looks like over half of the Patch houses have been demolished. Even the 17th St. crossing is blocked. Access to the Patch is via a new road named Camino Drive, which crosses the tracks several blocks earlier. Camino Drive curves left through the old rail yard, then approaches the remnants of Bridgeport Patch from what would have been the middle of the roundhouse. As it passes through the rail yard not far from the riverbank, Camino Drive provides an unobstructed scenic view of Krepp's Knob across the river.

John Camino was not the only young man from Brownsville to die in Vietnam, but he was the first, and he was from Bridgeport. I remember the large-type headline in the Brownsville Telegraph. He was about in eighth grade when I was in first grade. I vaguely remember him as a patrol-boy standing at the front of the school bus, flirting long-distance with the patrol-girl in the back. It's nice that Bridgeport will always remember.