20 years before Jan de Bont, there was Jack M. Bickham.
Set during a fictional Super Outbreak of tornadoes closely modeled after the 1974 outbreak
(that was virtually Ripped from the Headlines in 1976, when the book was published). Things we take for granted now - cell phones, NEXRAD Doppler radar, real-time weather over the internet - did not yet exist. Storm chasing was in its infancy. And the only thing standing between millions of people and death or injury is Ed Stephens, director of the Kansas City National Severe Storms Forecasting Center. The story chronicles, in the manner of a disaster epic, the parallel stories of a number of people affected in one way or another by the severe weather bearing down on them - from the mayor of a small (fictional) town in Ohio, to a famous author in his mansion in Birmingham, to an up-and coming politician in West Virginia with a large mistress problem.
And after April 4th, nothing will be the same again for any of them.
The novel provides examples of:
- Alpha Bitch: Donna Fields, big time. She seduces the up-and-coming lawyer and politician George Abrams, who fancies himself quite the lady's man - and intends to bleed him dry through blackmail to avoid having his political ambitions scuttled. Then a freak tornado drops a bridge on her, and he escapes scott-free.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: The Narrator occasionally slides into this when describing the tornadoes. For example, his description of a large wedge tornado with an orbiting satellite:The two tornadoes, the one huge, great, and black, limitless in its power and evil duration, and its smaller companion, dancing like a mad little child in jubilation with its parent's grotesque horror, swept deeper into Thatcher.
- Asshole Victim: Abrams, when he's caught in a blackmail scheme thanks to his womanizing. His blackmailer as well.
- Author Tract: The segments set in Columbus, Ohio, the author's hometown. It gets off relatively lightly during the outbreak with an airfield hit and two deaths.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: What attracts Mo Doyle to Mike Hegstrom in the first place, and is explored in extremely graphic detail during their sex scene.
- "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Said by Donna Fields almost word for word when Abrams calls her little scheme out for what it is.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Congressman Buck Tatinger. He repeatedly insists that his perpetual Inspector Javert hunt for "waste, fraud, and abuse" was nothing personal, but he absolutely bedevils Ed Stephens during the outbreak.
- Diabolus ex Machina / Death by Irony: The truck driver, after escaping an armed carjacker and saving a woman's life from a flash flood, promptly hydroplanes his truck in a sudden rainstorm and kills himself.
- Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud: In full effect; at the time the theory that tornadic winds could extend far outside the radius of the condensation funnel wasn't even a glimmer in Dr. Fujita's eye. More than one person gets a look right up the center of a condensation funnel, which hovers obediently to let them have their look. Only slightly averted by Barney, the Thatcher deputy and skywarn spotter, who has a very close encounter with the Thatcher tornado when it is in a stovepipe stage, and gets blasted with plenty of wind and debris before it moves on.
- Friend-or-Idol Decision: Right after the tornadoes hit Thatcher, Mike Hegstrom puts Mo to a choice: Him or her husband Mark Coyle. She chooses the latter and tells him to get lost.
- Gorn: The book does not stint at describing the horrifying injuries that tornadoes inflict on people. Impaled with Extreme Prejudice, crush trauma, blunt trauma, you name it. The opening act is an unforecast F-3 tornado hitting Killeen, Texas and killing an entire family by collapsing their house on their heads.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Most of the tornado's victims are innocents, but it is hard not to cheer when a freak tornado hits a single apartment complex in West Virginia, skipping right over the meeting hall that George Abrams was at - and killing Donna Fields.
- One-Word Title: Named after the tornadoes that appear.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Mike Coyle, the mayor of the fictional town of Thatcher, Ohio (and brother in law to Ed Stephens). He repeatedly tries (and fails) to get bonds through to improve the town infrastructure including its tornado sirens. After the tornadoes rumble through, he remains so, scuttling his larger political ambitions to stay and help the town plan its rebuilding.
- Red Herring: Throughout the Super Outbreak, Ed Stephens keeps getting more and stronger chest pains, and we're lead to believe that his work during the outbreak will be his Dying Moment of Awesome. His heart is fine. It's an ulcer brought on by too many cigarettes, too much coffee, and too much stress.
- Ripped from the Headlines / Expy: Thatcher was obviously based off of Xenia, Ohio, hit by a multivortex EF-5 tornado during the Super Outbreak.
- Scenery Gorn: Everywhere after the tornadoes roll through. Also crosses over with literal Gorn - tornadoes are not gentle with their victims.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: After the tornadoes level Thatcher, Coyle sits the business leaders down and tells them that if they hadn't constantly been opposing his bond issues, a whole lot fewer people would have died and the town would have been much better prepared.
- The Immodest Orgasm: Donna Fields, right after she concludes the terms of her blackmail of George Abrams. Apparently she gets off on having powerful men under her heel.
- The '70s: Everywhere, but nowhere more than in its depictions of women - either grandmothers, Stepford Wives, Alpha Bitches, or dissatisfied housewives exploring sexual liberation through extramarital affairs. It wouldn't be out of place to call this The Ice Storm with tornadoes.
- Too Dumb to Live: Boyd in Columbus certainly qualifies. Given plenty of opportunity to get to shelter and a friend begging him to go down with him, he insists on seeing the large rope tornado hitting the airfield up close. It blows in the outer wall and flattens him like a pancake, making him one of two people killed in Columbus.
- Took a Level in Badass: Both Ed Stephens and Mike Coyle do this big time to rise to the unfolding catastrophes in front of them.
- Ur-Example: May be the Ur-Example of tornado themed fiction, and pretty much the only modern example to center around the folks doing the predicting and cleaning up from the fallout, instead of storm chasers.
- Worthy Opponent: Tatinger again, when he finally acknowledges the inhuman job Ed Stephens had to do during the outbreak. And removes the NSSFC from his cut list as a result.
