Friday marks 37 years since an overnight tornado killed four people and injured 157 others as it tore through Raleigh.
People who lived in Raleigh in November 1988 remember the tornado.
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The F-4 tornado spun through Wake, Franklin, Nash, Halifax, Northampton and Hertford counties.
The Kmart was flattened. Asbury United Methodist Church was destroyed.
Not many people expected a tornado or even severe weather in the waning days of November – when we're still sleepy from Thanksgiving and our minds are turned to the upcoming holiday season.
Some Raleigh residents remember crouching in their bathtubs while the walls shook around them.
Photo gallery: Remembering Raleigh's 1988 tornado
Triangle residents remember the 1988 tornado
"I lived behind that Kmart! I still have a fear of tornadoes after that night," said Jennifer J.
Another Raleigh resident, Lynda K., said, "I will never forget that night! My house at the intersection of Mine Shaft and Sawmill was completely destroyed with my family inside. I was six months pregnant with my third child. Thankfully, we were not hurt."
"Don't know how so many of us lived through that terrible storm," said Christy M.
A nurse at Rex hospital recalled leaving her shift after midnight. "It was very warm, very still and very eerie," she said.
Local children were lost in the storm
People still remember hearing the rumbling outside. They remember hiding in the bathtub. They remember children who died – 9-year-old Janet Barnes and 12-year-old Pete Fulghum.
"Pete Fulghum died as his bedroom walls came crashing in on top of him on that Monday morning. His family found his body an hour later, laying still beside his favorite fishing rod," wrote WRAL reporter Scott Mason.
Former WRAL anchor Charlie Gaddy remembered the tornado as well.
"The devastation of this thing was incredible," Gaddy said. "I'll never forget seeing a woman on the second floor at this apartment development off Creedmoor [Road]. There were no walls on the second floor, but her dresser. It's amazing what things are preserved and what things are blown away. Her dresser was still there and she went up and started going through the items on her dresser with no walls around her."
The tornado reached maximum intensity of EF-4 strength in northwestern and northern parts of Raleigh and remained on the ground for 84 miles.
Many Raleighites can't help but think of that strange and frightening night decades ago. It's shared loss, shared fear and shared history.