My job was always full of challenges.

It was a hot, very humid summer day in July 1989. The forecast was for thunderstorms, some possibly severe.

I was in my office and around 2:00 pm I heard a continuous loud noise outside. It sounded like we were having one of those motorcycle rallies that we have every year right across the street at the County Fairgrounds. I couldn't figure out what it was. So I went outside. It didn't take long to see what was happening.

I have some background in meteorology, having taken a very tough course at Cornell as a student, along with my flight training as a pilot and further training with the National Weather Service as a sky warn observer where I report severe weather in our county. There were what meteorologists call mammatus clouds in the sky. They were green and purple! These clouds form in very rare instances onto the bottom of cumulonimbus clouds, what we often call thunderheads. The clouds had scolloped bottoms. Some meteorologists refer to them as looking like breasts hanging from the bottoms of the clouds. No kidding.

The continuous flashes of lightning and the deafening roar of thunder was horrifying. I ran into the office and warned everyone, "I think we are in the middle of a tornado!" We were spared but part of Schoharie County was not.

The tornado cut a twelve-mile path, hopping and skipping along, from northwest to southeast. Thirty homes were severely damaged or destroyed.

Howe Caverns is a tourist attraction that draws thousands of people from around the country every year. As a matter of fact, spelunkers, those people who are crazy enough to go down into caves, come from around the world to explore our many caves and caverns. One attendant at the Howe Caverns Gift Shop reported that the souvenirs were flying out of shattered windows on one side of the building, while some of those same souvenirs were sucked back into the building from smashed windows on the opposite side of the gift shop!

But the real challenge came the next morning. When I arrived at the office, I contacted some key officials who could give me an idea of the number of farms that had extensive damage. There were nine. So I set out to see if I could be of any assistance.