An F5 twister with winds of 261 mph roared into La Plata on April 28, 2002, and left a 64-mile path of destruction across four counties.

When it was over, it entered the record books as the worst tornado in Maryland's history.

It killed three, flattened buildings and, according to The Baltimore Sun, left a plate of fried chicken undisturbed on a counter in a fast-food restaurant whose walls and roof were gone.

Irene Bowie Wood, a La Plata resident, was 11 years old when on Nov. 9, 1926, an unseasonably warm day, a savage storm raced up the Potomac River and barreled down on the Charles County community a little after 2 p.m.

The tornado, which left a path of destruction 18 miles long and 140 yards wide, ripped a schoolhouse from its foundation with 56 students and two teachers inside, and dropped it into a grove of trees 50 feet away.

Seventeen were killed, including Wood's sister, and 13 classmates. Wood was not in school that afternoon because of a dental appointment.

The dentist's wife took her to the window and explained that the noise was “from a large airship passing overhead,” Wood told The Sun in 2002.

The storm deposited a piece of the schoolhouse in Upper Marlboro, 25 miles away, and a page from a school ledger landed 36 miles away in Bowie.

Wood was 93 when she died in 2009.

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frasmussen@baltsun.com