Tornado

There was a considerable amount of violent weather across the area yesterday.  Weather is like water in a river; almost nothing can be done to stop it.  The wind was pretty wild and it wasn't too long until the power went out here.  It has been a long time since I went to bed at 8:30.

When I was a kid, a tornado went through the town I lived in.  I remember being at my piano teacher's house for lessons.  I remember the odd weather that was going on outside. It was raining, but one side of the street was raining very hard and on my piano teacher's side of the street, there was almost no rain.  As I recall, the tornado actually went through around the time we went home from the piano lesson, but it was likely several miles away.  This is still very close by tornado standards, but a safe distance away.  In my juvenile mind, the sign of an imminent tornado became rain visible in one area and not another.  Because there were numerous open fields in my neighborhood, and a large parking lot for the church across the street, seeing waves of rain coming across or dividing an open space was not a rare occurrence.  I don't recall this striking fear of the next tornado, but more anticipation that it was coming.  Nobody I knew was hurt in the tornado and I never saw the destruction, so how bad could they be.  Looking back now at news stories from 30 years ago, the tornado hit downtown on May 13, 1980 and killed 5 people; there were 79 hurt and massive devastation.

Another thing I remember about the tornado was that even though it went through the downtown area, the library was barely touched despite being in the devastated area.  My dad told me the only damage was a hole the size of a grapefruit in the roof.  The library held divine powers of safety.  The library also held a small museum with a real Egyptian mummy and a gift shop with giant marbles, so it was good it was spared.

I still rarely seek cover from bad weather.  Like most people, there is a complacency about it.  Despite the amount of devastation a tornado can do, and the personal injury and death they cause, they happen over a relatively narrow area.  At one time, I had a weather radio.  It only lasted a short amount of time until I got sick of it going off for a garden variety thunderstorm in another part of the county.  The foolishness of this is not lost on me.

What was most notable about the weather yesterday was that when I got home from work, the sky was a calm blue and it was a warm late winter evening.  People were being hurt and houses destroyed at that time about as far from my work location as I was, only in the other direction.  Nature wins, always.

Hopefully bed time won't be at 8:30 tonight.