Sunday, April 15, 2012

A Long Night

"Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?" ~ Kelvin Throop III

How do you like that? One week after we move into our new house, our relative domestic tranquility is disrupted by the threat of a series of tornadoes bearing down on us.

I've been through these things before, including a massive F4 category tornado in 1991, now known as the infamous "Andover tornado".


This is the same one I saw, personally. It had weakened quite a bit by the time this video was taken.

I saw that one up close and personal from the door of my office building. I don't remember being as frightened then as I was last night. Since I grew up here in Wichita, I should be somewhat used to these events, but I found last night that I'm not.

On the other hand, my wife is a native of Virginia. She has lived in Fredericksburg Virginia her entire life, from infancy. Tornadoes are an extremely rare occurrence there. I thought she would be scared stiff.

She actually handled it better than I.

At the height of the storm, when the lights went out, she went to bed.

The tornado struck a mobile home park not more than five or six blocks from our new home, destroying, according to the latest reports, about 100 homes. I haven't left for church yet, but there is a strong possibility that I won't be able to leave the area due to downed limbs and power lines. There are reports of damage directly to the south and east of us. The tornado missed us.

As far as we know now, no one was seriously injured.

All in all, it wasn't nearly as bad as predicted. I'm going to resist the temptation to point out that the weather experts can't even accurately predict what the weather is going to do the next day. How are we supposed to put our trust in them when it comes to predicting Global Warming as far as hundreds of years into the future?

Yes, I'm tempted, but I won't say anything this time.

What a welcome home!

2 comments:

Krystal said...

I'm glad you're okay and safe.

Mark said...

Krystal, A few days after the storm, I saw a graphic of the tornadoes track on some weather web site. It was an aerial photograph with a wide pink line drawn across it. Our home was in the actual path of the tornado. Many of our neighbors on both sides of us suffered some minor damage. One neighbor, two doors down, had a tree fall on his pick up truck, totaling it. Fortunately the only thing that happened to our house was some tree limbs that fell on our front lawn.