In 1985 we lived in a 1960 era ranch house in Macungie Township PA. On a Friday evening the four of us went out for ice cream. I almost unconsciously watched 3 vertical swirls dance in the sky. The Macungie Tornados.

 There were 3 large tornadoes, three sets of three small tornadoes. 

They took about a ten mile path through Fleetwood PA to Macungie PA following along South Mountain. 

As I remember it about 100 homes were damaged. 

One man heard a loud noise upstairs. He began climbing the stairs and looked up at the sky. The second floor and roof were gone. 

No one was injured. 

It was about 5 pm on a Friday night. Most people were out shopping. A few came home to the foundation where their home once stood. 

Julia was 5. Jeff 4. They were in the back seat. When we got to the town of Macungie I had to stop. The road disappeared into a river. Hard rain made visibility 20 feet. 

We continued up Rt 100 going around trees across the road. The ice cream place on top of South  Mountain was closed. No power. 

The fire departments closed Rt. 100. We went home a different way.

At home the weather alarm was blaring. The alert said "A tornado on the ground. 

I felt like an idiot who put his family in danger. 

 READ:

 Last Harvest: From Cornfield to New Town: Real Estate Development from George Washington to the Builders of the Twenty-First Century, and Why We Live in Houses Anyway Paperback – May 13, 2008

by Witold Rybczynski (Author) 

The area now has several thousand homes built in the area west of Allentown PA since we lived there.

Many more people will see and feel the effects of severe thunderstorms & tornados than ever before in the United States. It's partly because of global warming but mostly because of suburban development.

“Growth and development patterns mean there are many more homes and businesses in the way of tornadoes, hail and damaging winds than there were decades ago.” The Washington Post

The flatlands between South Mountain & Blue Mountain in Lehigh, Northampton Counties, Lancaster County & York County have always been tornado prone.  But they were mostly  corn & wheat fields or woods.  

Now both the areas are full of suburban style subdivision housing. 

The Macungie Tornado was about 4o years ago. I couldn’t find anything about with a Google search. 

I did find the other tornado that was near my family. We lived in a subdivision in Limerick Township PA near Schwenksville next to Limerick Township. 

The tornado came at 11 pm.  Most people including my family was in bed.

The Limerick Diner was open with customers at the counter. The tornado blew away the newer attached dining hall. 

We went to Sunday Brunch at the Limerick Diner across the street from the Limerick FD.  

I knew a man who lived 4 doors from the home of the family that was killed. The Limerick FD has PTSD. The response to a tornado warning in the Limerick area is fear.

“Tom Walters still remembers the chaos in Limerick Township two decades ago when a violent tornado ripped through the Montgomery County town.

“We were literally using the doors that were blown off the house for stretchers,” Walters said.

Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of the event that changed the town forever. On July 27, 1994, a tornado touched down in Limerick around 11:45 p.m. The twister intensified to an F3 and had peak wind speeds between 158 and 206 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

“A twister in the middle of Ridge Pike,” said Walters, who was the Limerick Fire Chief at the time. “Dancing back and forth.”

The twister caused major devastation to “the Hamlet,” a housing development that was under construction at the time. The tornado destroyed 20 of the 27 occupied homes. It also killed a family of three while injuring 25 other people. A savings bond owned by one of the victims, a 10-month-old child, was found the next day in Bath, Pennsylvania, about 40 miles north, according to officials.

The tornado also tore through Limerick’s business area, causing over $5 million in property damage.

“Once you got over the shock and surprise, you had a job to do,” Walters said.”

NBC 10 Philadelphia

20 Years Ago: Deadly Limerick Township Tornado

By David Chang • Published July 27, 2014 • Updated on July 28, 2014 at 2:11 pm

In Pennsylvania severe thunderstorms that carry tornados roughly follow the flatland between mountain ranges. Mostly Blue Mountain & south.

Betsy & me stood on the Appalachian Trail on top of Blue Mountain above the Lehigh Tunnel then known as the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. We could see north to the Poconos and south to the farmland between Blue Mountain & South Mountain. 

Undoubtedly America’s most famous hiking path, the Appalachian Trail (AT) rambles approximately 229.8 miles through the Blue Mountain Region of southeastern and eastern Pennsylvania.

Parts of Franklin, Cumberland, Dauphin, Adams, York, Lebanon, Schuylkill, Lancaster, Berks, Carbon, Lehigh, Northampton, Bucks, Montgomery and Chester County are in these areas. 

From Google Earth 

“Decades ago, hurricanes, floods and winter storms more frequently landed on an annual National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration list of billion-dollar weather disasters. But now, thunderstorms — some of them spawning tornadoes — are driving a surge in weather-related property damage and insurance payouts across the United States.

That is in part because the ingredients needed to produce intense, damaging storms — including energy, instability and moisture in the atmosphere — are becoming more abundant as the planet warms, meteorologists said. Such conditions are in place more often as human emissions of greenhouse gases trap heat around the planet like a blanket.

But a more significant influence on the rising storm damage trend has little to do with the weather: Growth and development patterns mean there are many more homes and businesses in the way of tornadoes, hail and damaging winds than there were decades ago.

In the case of the Houston storm, any event sending 100-mph winds through a dense downtown would cause major destruction. But given how quickly the Houston region has grown in recent decades, sprawling into the Texas prairie, the event could still have caused billions of dollars in damage had it not tracked through the city center, said Steve Bowen, chief science officer for reinsurance broker Gallagher Re.

“There’s just that many more structures that potentially are going to be impacted,” Bowen said.

Thunderstorms are driving a surge in billion-dollar disasters

NOAA has been tracking billion-dollar weather disasters since the 1980s, with only a handful of such extreme events each year back then. But over the past two decades, the tally and toll of such destructive events have surged, even when accounting for inflation.

Thunderstorm events are largely driving the growth.”

MORE AT:

The Washington Post

The surprising reasons thunderstorms are more destructive than ever

A significant influence on the rising storm damage trend has little to do with the weather.

Scott Dance

Updated May 21, 2024 at 11:19 a.m. EDT|Published May 21, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EDT