Night of the Twisters

I've wrestled with how personal I want this blog to be lately.  On one hand I enjoy featuring serious (or interesting, at any rate) news pieces and my resultant responses.  This serves a purpose, certainly.  I've considered a general refrain from the more personal topics, namely because who really cares and, more to the point, why share it on the Internet in the first place?  Well, mother, I'm not exactly handing out my phone number to total strangers here.  After much deliberation I've decided, what the heck.  I can put whatever I feel like on here.  Excuse me if a post surfaces about the expiration dates on the cans in my pantry, that might be going a tad too far.  I'll figure things out as I go.

Anyways, last evening, as I was futzing around (it's a technical term, you understand) on my (relatively) new (okay hand me down) 24" computer monitor (thanks Uncle T!) I was startled by a sound I have not heard since the middle of last summer.

See, I live in a stretch of the U.S. known as Tornado Alley.  We have a tornado season, similar to hurricane season and baseball season (some are more catastrophic than others), which is generally a summer thing.  It's all based on the fluctuations of the jet stream and front movements and a bunch of other fancy weathery terms that all basically mean that our particular part of the Midwest offers the perfect tornado-inducing weather.

Funny story, when my parents first arrived in the St. Louis area some time ago on a military installment, fresh from the West coast, they had no clue about the technicalities of living in a tornado-prone area.  One day my mother was at a store when lo and behold the sirens went off.  Bless her heart, my mother allegedly turned to the nearest Midwesterner and asked WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?!  I truly wish I could have seen what that other woman's face looked like when she replied with, to her, the obvious explanation.  My mother says the woman looked at her like she had two heads.  I don't doubt it.  Silly West-coaster.  What I find additionally amusing to the story is that the sirens might not have been an actual tornado warning; during the "official" (you'd think I knew when this was) tornado season, there are drills on the first Monday of every month.

It was after 10 o'clock last night when I heard the first blasts of the tornado siren.  I honestly thought there was an emergency vehicle on my street, though I couldn't figure out what kind would make such an odd sound.  Then it dawned on me.  Maybe it was just a test, you know, past ten... on a Sunday night... Okay, the test theory got ruled out pretty quickly.

Wait, a tornado siren in February?

We did have a wave of tornadoes blow through on New Year's Day.   It's possible but highly uncommon for tornadoes to form over the winter months.  The bursts of unseasonably warm weather over the past month, however, combined with the alternating cold (and normal given the season) weather is actually a perfect recipe for an unstable atmosphere.  Tornado alley, ladies and gents.

Last night when the sirens went off I took a look outside but it didn't look much worse out there than any other given thunderstorm.  Then I checked the Doppler.

Red is bad.  

This is only a snapshot from last night, obviously, and doesn't reflect the storm at its peak.  At one point, a decent majority of the metro area was covered by red mass.

The first round of sirens died down as we considered taking cover in the basement.  When the second round flared up, which was around when the storm peaked for us (i.e. it was at it's highest intensity, i.e. it was VERY violent out there), I was all for the basement option.  I tossed my mac book and cell phone into a tote, then grabbed my cat and a blanket.  Just the essentials.

I didn't get to the basement, however, because en route the sirens stopped and the storm quieted significantly.  Still wary, as tornadoes are known to cause a sudden calm in a storm before a strike, I waited for the all clear from the radar.  We were good to go.

As I found out this morning, my dad and a friend of mine in other parts of the area, saw some more action than we did.  My dad's place only suffered a few downed trees.  My friend's house, however, was hit by one of the tornadoes that actually touched down last night.  Fortunately, no one was hurt, and there was only some minor damage to his house (though his yard is apparently a mess).

In all the years I've lived in the Midwest, I honestly can't remember a tornado touching down in our area. In the past two months, including last night and New Year's Day, there's been more than enough.  Crazy.

All of this makes me want to dig out an old favorite book of mine, Night of the Twisters by Ivy Ruckman.  It's an oldie, I was in middle school when I last read it.

Sorry this post didn't feature any exciting tornadoes, here's a picture of one to suffice.  

Cheers!

RF