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nebraska sends me off with tornadoes.
Jun. 6th, 2008 12:18 amI hadn't been in a tornado warning for years until last night. That was fun. I was planning on watching Law & Order, and we knew there were storms, and then we heard the tornado siren go off. We went down to the basement with the cat even though it didn't look like it would touch us because the anchor on channel 8 was histrionic, and my mom's afraid of tornadoes, and I suppose so am I, and we watched the big red blob move east. But the watch continued until 4 a.m., when I went to bed. Tornado outbreaks happen in surrounding areas all the time but they almost never get close enough to send Lancaster County for us to get a warning. I told my mom that there was some geographical reason why Lincoln would never get hit by a tornado. She was doubtful. I'm not sure it's true either. Apparently they thought that about Waco - taking the word of some Native Americans - and then Waco was attacked and 114 people died, and their economy never recovered. And I guess that resulted in everything else you've heard about Waco.
There was damage, but not much; I don't think anyone died. I guess it scared some circus elephants in Kansas.
I wonder what it is about tornadoes that scares people, including myself. If you think about them logically they're ferocious but small and narrow and don't last too long and they usually destroy barns more than anything else. But apparently the Tri-State Tornado, the deadliest on record in the U.S., killed 695 people in 1925 - the world's deadliest tornado belongs to (surprise!) Bangladesh, in 1989 (1300 people). And then there's the possibility of multiple F5 or F4 tornadoes - sixteen tornadoes on the ground at the same time, 148 tornadoes in 18 hours (Super Outbreak, U.S./Canada, 1974).
I think what it really is about tornadoes, at least for me, is what they look like, the fact they drop out of the sky. Even little dust devils scare me in that regard, and those I've seen. They're the only natural disaster that's a monster, a thing. You can't really see hurricanes and earthquakes in the sense that you can see tornadoes, and although you can see volcanoes the mountain doesn't get up and chase you - the lava might, but it creeps along the ground. But tornadoes, they're a thing you can point to and say "there be monsters" and be tempted to run from at ninety-degree angles.
There was damage, but not much; I don't think anyone died. I guess it scared some circus elephants in Kansas.
I wonder what it is about tornadoes that scares people, including myself. If you think about them logically they're ferocious but small and narrow and don't last too long and they usually destroy barns more than anything else. But apparently the Tri-State Tornado, the deadliest on record in the U.S., killed 695 people in 1925 - the world's deadliest tornado belongs to (surprise!) Bangladesh, in 1989 (1300 people). And then there's the possibility of multiple F5 or F4 tornadoes - sixteen tornadoes on the ground at the same time, 148 tornadoes in 18 hours (Super Outbreak, U.S./Canada, 1974).
I think what it really is about tornadoes, at least for me, is what they look like, the fact they drop out of the sky. Even little dust devils scare me in that regard, and those I've seen. They're the only natural disaster that's a monster, a thing. You can't really see hurricanes and earthquakes in the sense that you can see tornadoes, and although you can see volcanoes the mountain doesn't get up and chase you - the lava might, but it creeps along the ground. But tornadoes, they're a thing you can point to and say "there be monsters" and be tempted to run from at ninety-degree angles.
