July 4th DISASTER! - The Ohio Fireworks Derecho of 1969

Today we look at one of the most significant storms to ever hit the state of Ohio.

Special thanks to Frederick Jay DeBell III for the color images of downed trees near Lakewood Park.

Derek Thompson's video:

Thanks for watching!

July 4th Megastorm - The Ohio Fireworks Derecho of 1969

[barbginley]

Your dad and I watched the storm from the front picture window. The sky was black, and the huge trees on our street were bent way over. We were scared shitless. Your grandmother, as I recall, put on a good front and told us everything would be okay, and it was no big deal. But we sure thought it was!

[checkitoutgoof]

You’re without a doubt the most underrated channel on Youtube in my opinion. Your videos are awesome and very informative. The algorithm brought me here so whatever you’re doing keep it up!

[RikkiSpanish]

Funny enough, July 4th, 1977 is also known for another famous derecho. It hit Wisconsin and Michigan, traveling over 800 miles in 14 hours. 37 people were injured and one died. It started around 10 am in Minnesota and didn't reach the Toledo, OH area until just after midnight on July 5th. I wasn't born until 1983, but my parents and one of my older siblings remembers it. My parents had to get my sister and brother out of bed and take cover late at night because funnel clouds were being spotted all over the Detroit area late at night(we lived in the northeast corner of Detroit). While it's not uncommon for us to get severe weather and tornado weather here in Detroit around July 4th, that was one of the few times we actually had dangerous weather on Independence Day.
A channel here on YouTube called The Museum Of Classic Chicago Television has a clip on one of the Detroit tornado warnings being issued. It's a short clip, but fun for those of us who are nostalgic.

[MarkL]

I was nine years old and living near St. John Hospital on Detroit Avenue at West 80th Street on the West Side of Cleveland. I remember this storm vividly. Watching the first winds swoop in and literally knock my next-door neighbor off his feet, watching the huge hollowed oak tree in the back yard fall over into the neighbor's yard, and after the storm passed through, watched in horror as fire trucks came up West 80th towards the Hospital with injured people from Edgewater, sitting or laying on them. It was like living through the Apocalypse.

[johntauren]

Derecho is a word I've only learned of recently when one struck southern Ontario and Quebec in May 2022. Winds like I've never experienced in my life.

[roslynmiller]

I remember this storm very well. We had just gotten to Edgewater and were looking for a place to sit. My husband said "look at those clouds, when the winds come up it will be pretty bad" He no sooner said this than the wind kicked up and the storm hit. Walking up the shoreway to go home a guy came out from under a tree. Turned out a tree had just fallen on his car.

[thomaspeffer]

Lifelong Lakewood resident here. Always been facinated by this event. Fun fact: it struck the shore at Lakewood Park at 7:55pm that Friday evening. Edgewater and Lakewood Park had record crowds that year for the 4th. The record still stands to this day. This storm is one event that I actually "got the T-shirt" for. Literally. Got it custom made complete with the DECCA radar image along with the storm stats on the front.

[JennRighter]

The 2012 derecho was the only one I experienced. It’s impossible to describe it in words. I lived in south eastern Ohio at the time, in a very wooded area (in Wayne National Forest). The skies were blue and there was no wind. Suddenly, wind and clouds blew in and the old growth trees surrounding my house were bending sideways. Breaking and cracking all around, falling onto my roof and deck. I had no power for 9 days. The day after the storm it took me three hours to travel what would’ve normally taken me 20 minutes because every possible path was blocked by fallen trees. I had to drive through and over smaller trees/branches to even get out.
The storm itself was shocking. But the most shocking thing was how sudden it was.
My only warning was from friends who experienced the storm 45 minutes or so before it reached me.

[NKP-]

My late mom talked about it often and another late friend of mine was camping in a trailer during this event . At the Wayne County Fair ( Wooster) there is sign on one of the barns that shows the water level on that day, and 2 Wooster police officers died attempting a water rescue nearby the fairgrounds.

[peggycampbell]

Excellent breakdown! I was at my grandparents cottage on Lake Erie, the backyard faced Bay Bridge. I remember it getting dark and the lights coming on the bridge. Dad looked around front and told everyone to grab their stuff and get out of there. He was incredible that night.

[craighenry]

You answered a question of mine that popped up when you began this video. We had just moved to Northeast Ohio, three months before this storm and its aftermath popped up. I was young, but, at 8 years old, I was old enough to remember some things. We were living in Alliance, about halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburg. Alliance has the second highest point in Ohio and we lived about 2 blocks from it, on a huge hill. I couldn’t remember when this occurred exactly, but I knew it was in the time we moved to Alliance or no more than a few years after. Anyway, we got a huge rain. I remember we had a foot of water in our driveway. A block away, there was a slight dip in the hill before the highest point. It flooded there enough that they brought a boat out. However, this was along a four lane highway, state route 62, and they had just installed new sewers no more than the month before. All of that water was gone within an hour. Other places didn’t fare as well. At the bottom of the hill, there was a street and there was a hill going up the other side from it, as well. Fortunately, it was the summer, because my elementary school was on that street and, as, you can imagine, it was a flooded mess. But it was summer, so things had time to dry out. Thank you for pinpointing that for me. I knew the general time that happened, but that pinpoints it.
Actually, that was just one of many instances of severe weather that occurred between 1969-1982 in Alliance (Some were statewide). I found a broken softball size hailstone in our yard a year or two after the flood. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, in 1974 ( Yes, that was an extreme year in Ohio for weather.) we had 22 inches of snow in town and ended up having an 8 day Thanksgiving vacation (We had ten snow days back then, and used them all. In 1978, we had the Blizzard, but I tell people, although the rest of the state, was buried, we had1/4 inch of snow on the sidewalk outside of our house. The 1974 snowstorm was far worse for us. In January of 1982, the whole state faced extreme cold. I was a junior at Ohio State and heading back to school on that Sunday. It was -13 when we left Alliance. The Bengals played in the AFC championship in Cincinnati that afternoon. They called it the Freezer Bowl. With the fastest wind gusts, the wind chill got down to 75 or 80 below. There were also 6 in. of snow that night in Columbus. It was so bad, there were rumors that OSU was going to cancel class the next day ( One of the radio stations falsely reported that, but it didn’t happen.). The cold was so extreme that when I got to my room there was an inch of ice on the INSIDE of the windows. What happened was that the temperature difference between outside and inside caused condensation which ran down the windows and flash froze. Like I said, there was a lot of weird weather in Ohio and Northeast Ohio, specifically during that time period.

[gsantos]

I was there as a child. It was insane. I didn’t understand what was happening. We were at the park and water was coming over. Also there was a water-spout. The water was coming from everywhere. My parents finally got me into one of the cars. Branches and other debris were everywhere. My mother was pregnant with my brother. My stepfather took her to the hospital in our 2nd car, she felt like she was going into labor.

Thank you for this video. We all survived.

[robertqueberg]

I am seventy five. Does that disqualify me? When this monster came into my life, I was in Loudenville, Oh., after a twenty mile canoe trip down the Mohican River. Friends and I drove back north through Wooster, and on to Lodi. The wipers were on high speed, all the way back. The lightening made the trip look like we were in a welding shop. The Wayne County fairgrounds in Wooster had high water marks on some of their barns. A young man died in a swollen creek just east of Wooster. The village of Lodi had flooding in the downtown area. The fifty mile drive home was a chore after that much canoeing.
Dick Goddard was a folk hero around north eastern Ohio for many years. This was a very well prepared production, which is standard practice for you. Thank you.

[DatsOdd]

8:23, I remember that storm, was heading east for home with that with it slowly gaining on me, I'll never forget how fast those clouds moved. Ended up having to take shelter at a farmplace when it caught up to me.

[starffruit]

wow! i didn’t know you were an ohioan! i’m one too—born in northeast central ohio, but currently living in columbus. i’m *way* too young to recall this event (my mom wasn’t even born yet!)—hell, i had no idea about it until i watched this! i do remember the june 29, 2012 derecho vividly, though. it knocked out my home’s power for over a week, two of the trees near our home had huge branches torn off of them and thrown into our yard, and it all happened on my ex step-dad’s birthday weekend. we watched as the wind whipped in the front yard in the living room, where there was this massive window. in retrospect, i probably shouldn’t have sat so close to the window, but it was really cool for a weather enthusiast like myself to watch. i remember my mom actually made brownies on the GRILL to celebrate afterwards since we didn’t have power.

this was a really nice watch, and it’s even more interesting thanks to you and your mom’s insight, from an ohioan perspective. keep up the good work! i’ve really loved your recent content.

[tomshiba]

I was just a kid living in Toledo that day. The east side of Toledo suffered the most with lots of flooding and damage. Our house in the south end avoided much of the damage, but I won't forget that sky.

[ktbear]

Dick Goddard!! What an absolute legend! For both meteorology and animal rescue.

How about the Palm Sunday outbreak?

[eevcsow]

I was 9 at the time. My brother and sister and I were staying at my grandmothers at the time. Her home was only 1 block south of the Shore way, and only about a quarter mile to the east from Edgewater Park. We were walking to Edgewater and as we reached a bridge that crossed over the Shore way, I will never forget that wall of clouds. It looked like a colossal rolled up carpet unraveling heading almost strait down. It was almost like you could reach out and touch it. We were still close enough to Grams to run back and make it to safety.

[wxguy]

When that happened, I was in Vietnam and even my parents who lived in Kent, never wrote or said anything about this storm. Thanks for this video so that I can see what I missed, but in Vietnam, we were having a different kind of fireworks show. Love your channel.

[williamanthony]

Howie Lund, a Cleveland radio personality, was the MC on stage at Lakewood Park that 4th. He kept telling the crowd to "think dry" in the hour leading up to the storm.

My Dad's group had just performed, and we walked to the fence overlooking the lake. My Dad looked at the clouds rolling in and said it was time to go. (He later told me he hadn't seen cloud formations like that since his days in the South Pacific) My Mom was arguing she'd come to see fireworks and wanted to stay, as he made us link hands and dragged the four of us in the general direction of our car. Then the Storm Hit...

That first gust was well over 100mph, and the wind just kept coming. It felt like being inside a blender set on high! I don't even know how we made it to the car. It was hard getting out of the park. My Dad took in a mother with a baby, and an unrelated teenaged kid, in our 4-door Impala. We got out of the there by driving over the grounds of Saint Augustine's Academy, which was next door to the park.

It took a while to drop off our passengers because the old man had to keep navigating around downed trees blocking streets. The amount of damage that took place in just a couple of minutes was unbelievable. It was equally unbelievable, in my opinion anyway, that only two people were killed at Lakewood Park that night.

I was 12... I was there... And it was B-A-D!