For those of you who don't know, DH-8 stands for DeHavilland Dash 8. The model I refer to in this story was a DeHavilland Dash 8-100, a 37 seat turboprop manufactured by Bombardier Canada. The DH-8 was designed as a short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft which means it is designed for hard, short landings and powerful acceleration to takeoff speed.

I remember the day we headed to West Palm Beach International Airport (PBI) not only because of the flight but because of how upset I was during the drive to the airport. I love chocolate (who doesn't?) and I had purchased a candy bar before we left my grandparents' town. After an hour in the car I decided I wanted to eat it, only to find out that it had melted to that gooey type you just can't get out of the wrapper. Now I was not just hot and feeling carsick, but I couldn't have my candy bar, either. I tried to cool it by holding it up to the cracked window, but that didn't work. The day was hazy, hot and humid, but otherwise seemed clear. The sun beat down and it was easily 80 F.
I don't recall much about the airport, getting on the plane, takeoff, or the first half of the flight. My friends at Airliners.net helped me refresh my memory with regard to the aircraft type we must have been on. We narrowed it down to a Saab 340 or a DeHavilland Dash-8, both of which were flown by Eastern Express (or Eastern Metro Express) in the mid-1980s. Given my strong dislike for the DH-8 and the memory of two seats on either side of the aisle, we decided I was probably on a DH-8.
My father recalls watching clouds build to the north and west of us. He said he was in awe of the power of nature to create such beautiful and huge formations. I'm not sure he realized that we would soon be flying right through what he saw. I do remember him telling my sister to look out the window. He and my sister were in the two seats behind my mother and me. Soon we were closing on those clouds.
Soon it began to darken around us. We were going between towering cumulus formations and the sun was blocked out. It was late afternoon so we weren't getting sunlight from directly overhead. We still weren't experiencing a lot of turbulence, and I might have even thought it was fun to be flying between the clouds.
At some point, though, the pilot spoke over the PA. Here's the gist of it, paraphrased from what I can remember and piece together from others:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain. We are approaching Jacksonville, but as you can see, the weather is pretty bad up ahead. It's going to be turbulent as we land. We would normally divert to another airport, but we've been having headwinds and there's really no way for us to turn around. All of the airports around us are experiencing the same weather. The air traffic controllers are going to do their best to get us through the safest parts of this storm. Please make sure your seatbelts are fastened. Flight attendants, please take your seats."

My mother is a white-knuckle flyer, and she knew that things had to be bad if the flight attendants couldn't be up and about the cabin. We drew closer and closer to the clouds and finally went in.
I've never been in such strong turbulence in my life. It was only the third or fourth time I had flown, and I had never experienced anything more than a blip. Now we were in a plane that was shaking side to side, bouncing in midair. The cloud was so thick that it was slate gray outside the windows. Many times, it seemed we were weightless. I'm still not sure how much of the extreme banking we went through was the pilot following ATC instructions to get through those "safe parts" or how much was that we were simply out of control, being shoved around by the updrafts and downdrafts. The wings were not level most of the time.
I spent much of this time praying the Our Father, saying the words faster than I had ever said them before. My mother was praying out loud, too. People in the plane were crying and when we had those weightless moments almost everyone went "Whoa!" Of course you know people were getting sick, too. I remember my jaw hurt because my teeth kept slamming together.
Another stranger thing happened, though. As scared and sure as I was that I would be dead within minutes, I wasn't so worried about myself. I kept turning around to my Dad and my sister and asking them if they were alright. The answer was always "yes," but I could tell my father was scared, too.
Finally we broke through the cloud base and we could see the ground, but by that time everyone's equilibrium was off. We came out at a bank angle and I could have sworn we were looking straight down at the ground. We went back into the clouds a few more times. It was so dark that it seemed we were coming in at night.
And then, at some point, we straightened out and slammed down on the runway. I remember that as we taxied in I could barely see out the window because the rain was pouring down the side of the aircraft. We taxied in at high speed and we were hurried off the aircraft.
I remember that we were running late for our next flight. The midair diversions through the safe areas had cost us quite a bit of time, perhaps 45 minutes. Once we were in the terminal it was apparent that neither we, nor anyone else, was going to leave any time soon.
On the television monitors flashed a red "TORNADO WARNING" alert. The fledgling doppler radar systems of Jacksonville filled the screen. Satellite imagery was the entirety of the evening news.

We had landed in that tornado.

I still don't know if there was any tornadic damage that day, but what I do know is that doppler radar was so new that it still took a report of a large funnel cloud or a tornado on the ground to warrant a tornado warning. It was bad... it was very bad... and we survived it.

I have to credit three different things for our survival that day:
First, the pilots. I don't know what their names were, but they held on to that aircraft with all they had, and we didn't crash. I imagine that without forward looking radar, they had no idea what they were about to fly into other than that it didn't look good. My gratitude goes to them.
Second, to the ATC. Since they were the ones would have had any radar, whoever was at the mic that day must have felt like s/he was throwing a needle *through* a haystack and hoping to find it come out on the other side. I'm glad we have a competent Air Traffic Control system here in the U.S.
Third and finally, I believe that the design of the DeHavilland Dash-8 is why my family is still alive today. The DH-8-100 may be an ugly duckling, and it may be my favorite plane to hate, but it is a strong plane with lots of power in the turboprops. Without that power and the large surface areas of the wing and vertical stabilizer (tail), we probably would have been history.

After describing the turbulence and the supercell thunderstorms we encountered that day, someone told me that we probably experienced Level 5 turbulence, possibly some Level 6.
Even a Boeing 747, the largest passenger aircraft, would be in tremendous trouble in Level 6 turbulence.
Oh, and the turbulence scale? Level 1 to Level 6.