1984 was worse in every aspect .

I lived through both of these outbreaks . 1984 was a lot stronger and more deadly .I had friends who lost. family members that night in 84 . The Red Springs and Greenville tornadoes were actually approaching F5 at their worst . I went to Beaver Dam and the whole area had been flattened by the two mile wide tornado . A farmer in snow Hill had his combine blown away and he never found it . The tornadoes removed the asphalt from highways in some areas and blew grown cattle into the tree tops . A 100 ton boxcar was tossed on it's side near Maxton. That tornado reached 2.5 miles wide. I will never forget the blackest skies I've ever witnessed that terrible night . The roar was heard about twelve miles east of the cedar Creek and beaver Dam tornadoes path . The tornadoes flattened 25, ooo acres of timber across the Carolinas and destroyed 1750 homes .

@@jeffbryan4019 This event has always interested me since I first heard about it. I’m sorry for the pain y’all suffered. I’ve heard about that combine story before and it’s mind blowing he never found it. This was the closest NC has ever been to getting an F5 tornado rating. I’ve heard from other witnesses the amount of lighting with that storm was off the charts. Let’s hope another event like that never happens again, because it would be much worse now considering the population growth. Thanks for sharing your story!

Yes the lightning was absolutely luminous and more rapid flashes than I've ever witnessed . Jonathan Finch called me from Dodge City Kansas about further information on his special case study of 1984 . He informed me that the Beaver Dam tornado near me was actually rated incorrectly by Ted Fujita . He said it definitely was an F4 in the area of Troy Fisher road . I told him that I always knew it was stronger than F3 . He said no doubt about it . That would indicate that we had suffered 8 F4 tornadoes instead of 7 . He also stated that that during his reanalysis if the event that he couldn't locate even one small break or let up in the major tornado damage path from White Oak through Greenville NC . The two that approached F5 were the Red Springs tornado and the Greenville NC tornado . We did have one other in our past that was a borderline F5 . That was the Rockingham NC tornado that occured with the Enigma outbreak on February 19 1884 . The four widest tornadoes in NC history all occured on March 28 1984 .