Tornadoes

A tornado recently tore through a neighboring town, causing quite a bit of destruction. My cousin's house was impacted and reminded me that even if you lock your doors and close your windows and blinds, the outside world can still come and get you. The odds of being hit by a tornado are pretty small, but clearly, it happens. As a kid, I’d heard tales about the destruction they have caused and learned quickly to respect their power.  

I grew up in a house that was very close to a tornado siren. When it went off it was scary as shit. As the siren rotated, the sound would fade and intensify as it issued forth in all directions. It was a familiar experience that would occur at 10:00 on the first Tuesday of each month as part of a regularly scheduled system test, however, being woken up by it was entirely different. It would jolt us out of bed and send us scrambling down to the basement in our p.j.’s huddled around the transistor radio waiting for updates. A couple of weeks ago, our local siren went off along with the warning alerts on all of our devices and had us gathering up from all of the bedrooms and living spaces to grab a flashlight and the dog, carrying her down the stairs as she wriggled to get free.

I have never seen a tornado, however. I mean, to actually stand there and witness one in person. The closest I came to getting a visual was in the early nineties stepping outside the door of my workplace onto the sidewalk and looking straight up to see a cloud slowly beginning to rotate. I quickly stepped back inside. Maybe not sticking around to see a tornado is evidence of my having good sense, yet there is an allure to them and a desire to experience one of nature’s most awesome phenomena first-hand. Ever since seeing The Wizard of Oz, with the sepia-toned muslin “tornado” spinning its way across the Kansas plains (still one of the coolest special effects scenes in movie history), I have been gripped by the fear and excitement of this phenomenon. I am not saying I want to drive around the Great Plains chasing one down, I just want to lift the door to my underground tornado shelter to see and hear it from afar, then close the lid and curl up next to the canned goods and candles until it fades away. I don’t have a shelter, this is just a fantasy, but you get the idea. 

There have been close calls over the years. A week after our first child was born, my wife and I left him with his grandma and caught a movie. Sometime during Austin Powers, the sirens went off, which we were not able to hear. It was only when we walked outside into the wind and rain that we heard it. We got into the car and hauled ass home. At some point the wet and windy conditions became intense and we could sense the presence of the tornado, off to the right of the road somewhere. There was so much rain and atmosphere that we couldn’t see much of anything. Drivers began stopping their cars in the middle of the road like complete idiots, unaware of what was actually happening. We wove around them until we were able to duck under the overhang of a nearby office building. It wasn’t until the next day that we saw the aftermath and just how close we had been to the action.

Many years later, my wife and middle son were at her tall office building on a day when a tornado slipped by outside. They huddled in the stairwell with the cleaning crew until it passed. As they walked out to their car afterward, they found uprooted pine trees laying on their side just outside the office windows.

Although these encounters are not unusual in the midwest, they are special enough that they inspire breathless “where were you when” and “how close was it to your house” conversations at work or school the next day, as everyone tries to one-up the other’s story. I have no interest in having the scariest, closest encounter especially as an adult with kids, cars, and a house to worry about. In the end, despite not ever seeing a tornado, I must admit that I am content to wait it out in the basement, sitting on the treadmill until the Weather Service gives us the all-clear to climb up the stairs and into bed.