Forty years ago this week, one of the biggest weather events in Evansville history unfolded
EVANSVILLE, Ind. – Forty years ago, Jason Engelbrecht was a first grader finishing up the school year on a class trip to Wesselman Park.
These were the days prior to reliable storm warnings, before cellphones and instant access to weather radar. So when all hell broke loose in Evansville on June 8, 1982 – the roiling skies, the constant lightning and the hurricane-force winds – it was a surprise to everyone.
Engelbrecht was among 80 people from Washington Elementary School on the class trip that day.
“The teachers (got) us against the interior of a shelter that's still at Wesselman Park to this day,” said Engelbrecht, now 47. “It had to be terrifying for those educators trying to protect 70 children.”
“Inside that shelter, there was a fireplace,” Engelbrecht added. “I was covered in soot after safely making it through the storm.”
His clothes were so filthy, he threw them in the trash.
"It was the worst storm I can ever remember. I had never seen anything of that force.”
Winds topped 75 mph in 1982 storm
The June 8 windstorm is in the pantheon of severe weather events in Evansville history, alongside the 1937 flood, the 1978 and 2004 snowstorms, the 2009 ice storm and the 2005 tornado.
Winds in the 1982 storm topped 75 mph that injured 60 people and brought widespread power, telephone and cable television interruptions and extensive property damage.
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At tiny Skylane Airport on Evansville's North Side, about a dozen planes — several of them flipped over — were damaged by the winds. Willard Library, already in need of renovation work at the time, sustained nearly $100,000 in damage, as did the Audubon Raceway annex building in Henderson, Kentucky.
Cemeteries and crops were ravaged. Street signs and billboards were felled. WIKY radio was knocked off the air when the winds mangled its tower. Five panels of Bosse Field's center-field fence were toppled.
According to the entry in the National Weather Service's storm database, winds were recorded at 76 miles an hour at Evansville Regional Airport, said Christine Wielgos, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
There have been other dramatic wind storms since the one that became a standard-setter in 1982. In 2014, a macroburst of winds reaching 120 mph tore a path four miles wide and 35 miles long from the West Side of Evansville to near Gentryville, Indiana, two counties to the east. That storm damaged more than 100 homes, but injuries were scarce, in large part because of weather-warning technology that had made great strides.
Randy Wheeler, WGBF's station manager in 1982, said the National Weather Service described the ominous darkness, wall of clouds and vicious winds as an “inland hurricane."
"... The June 8 storm was terrifying in that it happened during midday when people throughout the area could witness what was happening in real time," Wheeler said.
"Many were tuned in to our reports on WGBF. One of our DJs was in a station mobile unit driving down Washington Avenue near what was then St. Mary's Hospital as trees and parts of buildings flew past him."
Contact Gordon Engelhardt by email at gordon.engelhardt@courierpress.com and follow him on Twitter @EngGordon.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Evansville storm caused damage on June 8, 1982
