Texas Tornados

Last night was a first.

          I’ve never been in a Tornado Warning before.

          We knew that the potential for some large storms was possible from the reports of the day before, so the all-day big rains and gusty winds came as no surprise. As the day rolled on, the reports became a tad more intense, and it became obvious that we could have some significant weather.

          There are a few things in this world that frighten me.

          Actually, there are a lot of things that frighten me, but these are the ones that stick out.

          Spiders

          Alligators

          Sharks

          And Tornadoes…..especially in the dark.       

          It’s probably strange then to admit that Twister is one of my favorite movies. The cast is superb, Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman round out this crew of rag-tag storm chasers whose only goal is to gather information to help in developing an early warning system. Not the loser TV storm chasers who’s attempts at this are gossamer-veiled efforts of thrill-seeking, grandiose, You Tube wanna-be’s who benefit at someone else’s expense.

          I’ll get off of my soap box now.

          Anyway, Danny had been giving us hourly updates as the day progressed. He kept the TV on and of course the Houston stations and the Weather Channel gave periodic reports all day long. It was decided that if a Warning came our way, that the prudent choice would be to abandon the motorhome and retreat to the relative shelter of their house.

          Why, and how, do tornados always find a Mobile Home park to devastate? This is one of the aspects of tornados that I do not like. Do they have a mind of their own? Are they that masochistic that they need to find the most vulnerable of us and like a bully in the playground, inflict as much devastation on the weakest of us?

          Sorry…. but that’s how I see it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

          It was sudden enough.

          We were in the motorhome watching the second season of West Wing when both of our cellphones shrilly announced what we did not want to hear.

          A Tornado Warning.

          Tornado Watches are handed out like pamphlets in front of the side-shows in New York City.

          Warnings are a different animal altogether.

          Warnings, especially in today’s age of Doppler Radar, where they can actually see the tight rotation on the fringes of a thunderstorm cell and predict its path with some un-nerving accuracy, are something altogether different.

          It is now officially scary time.

          We gathered a few things, wallet, purse, flashlights, etc. and headed over to the house where we could see the many cones of probability displayed on the TV screen. I’ve never seen so many Warnings posted at the same time. This was a very prolific system.

          There we were.

           We had our very own cone of probability to contend with.

          It was getting dark outside, and the sky was about as portentous as it could be, which was compounded by the Warning that we had just received. The only other time that I have experienced anything like this was in 1962, I was in Second Grade in Berkeley, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. It’s one of those things that I’ve never forgotten, not because we were effected by it, but just because of that ominous nature of the sight of that funnel dangling from the classic murky green-gray sky that always seem to breed these monsters.

          Except in the dark.

          You can’t see it in the dark.

          You can only hear it in the dark.

          It was now dark where we were.

          You think of stupid things at these times. Tons of what-ifs that hopefully never mature into what-nows.

          My what-if had to do with the three-foot long model of the USS Constitution that I’ve been working on for several years. Aside from the perilous nature and personal safety aspects of this time, and thinking that just about anything else can be replaced, I thought of my model.

          I cannot replace those years of time and effort.

          So, glancing at that Cone of Probability and knowing that any meteorological event was still a little while away, I went back into the motorhome and fastened it down using the same techniques that I do when we are traveling. It’s actually very secure and aside from something being tossed into it, it may have at least a fighting chance of survival. You know the story. A refrigerator is tossed and found blocks away with the carton of eggs still inside with not one of them broken.

          Who can figure?

          I figured that I at least give her a fighting chance, they don’t call her “Old Ironsides” for nothing!

          We watched that cone progress on the television. We are situated on the eastern side of Lake Somerville, and it appeared that the rotation was headed for the western side of the lake and would miss us.

          Good for us, but it was far from over for anyone else that was in its path, and it was headed straight for College Station, the home of Texas A & M University and all of its student housing. Hopefully it either didn’t develop or changed course a little and kept to the relatively vacant thousands of square-miles of farmland that abounds in this part of Texas.

          We will find out a little later when we tune into the morning news.

          We leave for Colorado at the end of next week and as much as I like where we are now, I’m not sure that I could endure a summer’s-worth of Tornado Alley activity.

          If I were here regularly during this season, I would have a Tornado Shelter in a heartbeat.