Life in Tornado Alley

I live smack dab in the middle of tornado alley and have all of my life. I grew up on a farm fifteen miles from town, which is the same as as saying fifteen miles from nowhere. We didn't have tornado sirens on the farm, so the whole siren thing has taken getting used to.

As a child I was frightened of storms. More specifically, I was frightened to be ALONE during storms. Nowadays I'm energized by them, as if the electricity in the air absorbs through my skin and travels through my bloodstream. Rain, lightning, thunder, hail, high winds. I'm fascinated by them all. Nevertheless, despite my voyeurism, I have never seen a funnel firsthand. Never.

The first few times the siren went off here, Carl was still at work. We didn't have a basement so I gathered the three girls and went to the neighbor's basement. I did that twice and neither time did a tornado touch down. I learned that the sirens are turned on whenever the clouds contain rotation that could easily drop down in funnel form, but a funnel does not have to be present.

After the sirens had cried wolf twice, I began ignoring them. One morning I was awakened at 6:30 to the sound of high wind. I laid in bed listening groggily as it wailed through my yard at higher and higher decibels. I became uneasy but thought, "There's no siren. I'm not crawling out of bed yet." Suddenly I heard CRACK and BAM followed by the sound of a locomotive barrelling down the street, but still no siren. Carl and I leaped out of bed, opened the front door and gazed on unbelievable destruction.

Entire trees had been uprooted and laid over into the street. The electricity went out and stayed out the entire day. The wind died down so we awakened the girls and drove around to try to determine what the heck had happened. I had never seen destruction like that without a tornado siren. Enormous trees were uprooted everywhere, two of our neighbors had trees fall through their roofs, and power lines laid dangerously across many roads.

It turns out it wasn't a tornado, but was a straight-line wind, which doesn't trigger a siren. Thankfully no one was seriously injured in our town, which was a miracle. If I ever get a chance to scan the pictures I have from that day, I will. Until then, here are some pictures of a straight-line wind storm we had in May of this year. Again, no siren.

Katie, Hailey and friend Shelby in front of an uprooted tree. I wish I would have taken a picture that captured the depth of the cavern left from the tree root.

A broken tree...

Another uprooted tree that landed on a van.

Same van, different angle....

Mother nature is a powerful beast.