BLOW

I sat on a step about half way down the basement stairs, in pitch dark except for the glow from my smart phone. Outside, wind, rain, thunder and lightning were having their way. Under it all was the rise and fall of the local severe weather warning siren. Before that I was watching television where the weather had preempted normal programming. There was a long, narrow band of storms reaching from the Oklahoma pan handle up through western Iowa. Normally the radar shows green bands of rain layered up against yellow with the most severe weather in red. This front was all red except for tiny threads of green and yellow on either margin. We had known it was coming, forecast two days earlier. Wind in the tree tops had been howling all day. My cell phone app does a better job of detailing the map so I was checking it as well. The storm was moving west to east but on an angle. The effect was severe weather moving south as it crossed the state line. There were reports of hail and a funnel cloud north of Kansas City. As the thin green line moved across I-435 it started raining hard.

What had been distant thunder and lightning rolled in quickly. I went to the door and watched as rain began to blow horizontal under the street light. Then the neighborhood went dark. Power hadn’t been out even a minute when the sirens came on. With I-phone in hand I headed for the basement. My weather app stopped working so I texted my son in San Antonio. He booted up his weather app and gave me a blow by blow account of what was happening on my end. After about 15 or 20 minutes he sent a photo of our radar. The red band had moved on to the east and we were out of harm’s way. I thanked him and he replied, “de nada.” 

So the sirens came back on for a minute or so to sound the all clear. I checked on a friend up the street. She had candles going and her pets were still spooked. There was a big tree down across the street and I had to drive around the block to get there. When I got home it was after 10:00, with no idea how long the power would be out. Sleeping in a recliner in front of the TV, I knew I’d wake up when it came back on. I woke up to the sound of morning news, reporting on storm damage around the area. There were 19 tornados reported but widely scattered, no monster storms, no fatalities and few injuries. Not to minimize any storm damage but tornado stories are so often about F-5 storms that level a path blocks wide and miles long. Death and destruction that rivals war can come on the same breath; I felt we had dodged the bullet. 

But that was last night. It’s just March and this storm season could run on through June. I don’t put much stock in destiny or fate but there will be more nights with storm sirens, sitting on basement steps before tornado alley settles down. If my house blows down we’ll make a new house. If it kills me, I’ll be dead. But I like my weather app. When you can watch the signature, echo hook of a super cell, the exact spot where a funnel will drop if it’s going to drop: that is pretty awesome. 

I could expand with observations and opinion on climate change but it would’t change anybody’s mind. Tornado season will come and go like it should but not the medieval, knee-jerk bias against science. If it pushes back against popular ideology then it must be a subversive conspiracy. In that mode, self righteous opinion is more appealing than disciplined research. But your opinion depends on you, it belongs to you while facts are independent, you can’t frame your own facts. Oh, I don’t want to go there. When it blows, climate doubters retreat to the basement just like I do.