When the same weather system produces many tornadoes in a short time, meteorologists call it a tornado "outbreak." Of all the tornado outbreaks on record, one stands far above the rest. It's known as the "Superoutbreak, and it ended in the wee hours of the morning on this date in 1974.

In a 16-hour period starting around noon the previous day, severe thunderstorms spawned 147 tornadoes in 13 different states from Alabama to Michigan. The total path length of all the twisters was more than 2500 miles. The tornadoes killed more than 300 people and injured nearly 6000. Alabama, Kentucky and Ohio were especially hard hit.

One of the Ohio tornadoes was rated F5, the highest ranking on the tornado intensity scale, with winds exceeding 260 mph. This tornado tore a path a half-mile wide through Xenia, a community of 30,000 people about 50 miles northeast of Cincinnati, detroying a quarter of the residential housing in the city and leaving half the businesses and schools uninhabitable.