Tornados and Floods

Mother Nature ravaged the South in the past two weeks with killer tornados from Mississippi to Virginia and record flooding along the Mississippi river.  The tornado that ripped through Tuscaloosa, AL garnered much national attention and hit home with me as well since my son is a student at the nearby University of Alabama.  He picked a good semester to study abroad however, and was not threatened by the storm from his dorm in Scotland.  To my knowledge, none of his friends were hurt, however several trees fell on the off campus house of two of his buddies and they escaped injury by riding out the twister in a storm shelter.

Tornados are a fact of life in the Midwest and the South and many occur each year.  They usually hit farm land and lightly populated areas because most of the US land is lightly populated.  When the statistics decide that it is time for a tornado to touch down in a large town like Tuscaloosa, the destruction can be extreme.  When a tornado “watch” is announced in north Alabama it means that weather conditions are favorable for tornado formation.  We go about our normal business with maybe a heightened awareness of changing weather conditions, but without fear.  If a tornado or a funnel cloud is actually spotted, the watch becomes a warning and sirens sound which means “get to a shelter”.  Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t.  Doppler radar and other weather forecasting technology are good at locating and tracking the path of storms and we can tell from the TV news which part of the county is threatened.  We should fear the tornado warning more and always go to a shelter, but the localized nature of these storms means that most of the time, they are just close calls.

I’m sure that anyone who has lived through being in the path of one of these storms must fear them more.  Over 200 people were killed in Alabama during this latest tornado outbreak and many are still missing.  My prayers are with all those who were affected.  I’m also going to get into the basement faster the next time I hear the storm siren go off.