Once upon a time I had a healthy respect for tornadoes. In
childhood we spent many an hour in my grandmother’s cellar, waiting storms out.
My family also, from time to time, drove out to watch funnel clouds that were a
safe distance away. We would check out nearby places torn to bits by tornadoes.
It’s wild want twisters can do. Drive blades of grass into trees, gut a house
while two homes on either side are untouched, pick up livestock (or people) and
set them down a mile away unharmed.
I’ve seen horse trailers in trees, round
bales of hay weighing over a ton pitched around like tumbleweeds, metal wrapped
around trees, the list goes on and on.
Then there was the night I had to ride one out in my mobile
home. My mom and I had gone to bed in a thunderstorm watch. At the time I
didn’t get nervous with the promise of storms, and I wasn’t worried. Around
midnight I awoke with an eerie feeling. I couldn’t pin it down and I got up and
looked out my bedroom window. A bit of thunder and lightning, the dogwood tree
outside was swaying a bit with the wind, nothing too dramatic. Yet, I couldn’t
shake the bad feeling as I watched the wind stop completely and all fell still.
Suddenly BOOM the tree flattened to the ground, and I heard
the roar barreling down on us like a freight train—literally happened in the
blink of an eye.
Terrified, I ran to wake my mom. She jumped out of bed and
we dashed to the front door, hoping to make it across the road to our neighbors
who have a basement. The front door wouldn’t budge, thanks to suction from the
tornado, even though we both tried, which probably saved us in the end.
With no other choice we ran to the bathroom and climbed into
the bathtub. We had to shout to be heard over the horrendous howl of wind. The
mobile home popped and cracked while the floor bucked (the place is tied down
by logging chains attached to large cement pillars driven in the ground.) I
expected the whole place to blow apart any second. My mom was sobbing, but I
think I was overwhelmed to the point it didn’t feel real. How could I possibly
have gotten stuck in a mobile home in the middle of a tornado? They tell people
to get in ditches as a last resort, just don’t stay in mobile homes.
It seemed to last forever, but honestly I’d say maybe only a
couple of minutes, before the roar moved on. By some miracle the mobile home
held together. When we came out of the bathroom we found the front door had
blown open and the living room was soaked. Outside, our fruit trees were
twisted off, limbs and trees were down here and there. Our neighbors looked
barely touched with only a few limbs down. The twister had been small, a zero or one, with wind speeds around 100+ mph. Lucky us!
Now I’m terrified of bad weather, particularly wind. My
healthy respect has turned into a full on phobia, but can you blame me? Even
today, tornadoes are elusive. We didn’t even have a thunderstorm warning that
night. The huge F-5 Joplin, Mo, tornado that wreaked havoc with 300+ mph winds remained
invisible to radar in the beginning. They didn’t know about it until it started
ripping apart their hospital like a piñata.
If you live in Tornado Alley (or thinking of moving here)
PLEASE don’t take our weather lightly! Keep an eye on the sky and take watches/warnings
seriously.
