estimated at more than 1.5 million dollars. Tornado of 1933 It was an unusually mild late-winter day in Nashville. A warm, moist air mass covered most of the southeast. A powerful cold front lay to the northwest, and centers of low pressure sat over the Great Lakes and western Arkansas. The warming trend had begun after the 10th of March, when the temperature had failed to rise out of the 30s. As a persistent southerly wind fed air from the Gulf of Mexico several hundred miles northward the days before. The sky remained mostly cloudy on the 14th, the thermometer climbed to a remarkable 80 degrees at 3:00 p.m., which is unusually early in the year for such a warm temperature. Despite high humidity, the citizens of Nashville no doubt enjoyed their first real taste of spring that afternoon. The fast moving cold front pushed a storm through the city rather quickly, dumping 0.81 inches of rainfall in a relatively short time. But what accompanied the squall line of severe thunderstorms was the deadliest tornado in Nashville's history. By the early evening, while the air was still warm and humid, destruction began four miles west of downtown over the rim of hills, near Charlotte Pike and Fifty-first Avenue. The damage between this point and downtown was not great, but the tornado quickly intensified. It passed either directly over or very near the State Capitol, on Charlotte Avenue, shaking glass from its windows. Then the storm hit with force on the north side of the Public Square downtown, significantly damaging several buildings, and passing within 400 feet of the Weather Bureau. The tornado thereafter crossed the Cumberland River to reach East Nashville north of the Woodland Street Bridge, and traveled eastward. The path widened from 200 to 400 yards, and damaged a row of four-story factory buildings along First Street, and a large portion of a brick wall of the building occupied by the National Casket Company, located at Second Street and Woodland. From this point, the path of destruction spread out to a width of 600 to 800 yards. For three miles, the tornado tore through a district of homes, churches, schools, and stores. Weather Bureau meteorologist Roger M. Williamson, whose home on Eastland Avenue narrowly escaped the storm's destruction, reported "for a terrifying fraction of a minute...walls, roofs, chimneys, garages and trees were crashing only a few yards away."