A couple of nights ago I was sitting in the cafeteria at work, having just polished off a passable but far from spectacular version of the KFC Bowl. It’s generally served in a build-your-own format, where you’re able to calibrate the ingredients. Which is a positive, admittedly. But sometimes the quality of the components just isn’t there. It’s the gravy, I’ve found, that is the most important part. Most people would say the chicken, but the gravy is quietly the key to it all. And this night it was, as I said, passable but far from spectacular. In any case. I was finished eating and just sitting there talking with some folks, when everybody’s cell phones began screeching like a mental patient who just got triggered by “Surfin’ Bird.”
I picked up my phone, which was still making an ungodly sound, and it said TORNADO WARNING! TAKE SHELTER NOW! I’ve never seen a tornado in my life, but I have a fear of them. It goes back to an episode when I was a kid, I think, when we were camping at Pirateland in Myrtle Beach, and some crazy storm came through. Campers were knocked over, awnings were ripped off trailers, metal poles were flying through the air like spears… My mother broke her ankle or somesuch, and it was SCARY. The sky looked like it was intent on murder.
But I’ve lived through a thousand tornado “warnings” in my life, and don’t think too much about them. The part about TAKE SHELTER NOW! was new, but I decided it was just standard verbiage. Nothing to be concerned about.
However, a few seconds later we were all being ordered into “the shelters.” The first thing that popped into my mind was, “We have shelters?” But hundreds of people were herded into a small windowless warehouse space, and I had no interest in that. I mean, seriously. So I made my way to another small windowless warehouse space on the other end of the building. Security was yelling at me, “You’re going the wrong way!” I told them I needed to check on some people, and continued. And I found a much more luxurious tornado bunker, with ample elbow room and a more pleasing ambience.
Everybody was yukking it up in there, of course, not really taking it seriously. But I was thinking about this episode of This American Life. In it, real life people at a high school prom are also yukking it up in a tornado shelter, very similar to the one we were in. But when they emerged their town was gone. If you haven’t heard it, you should give it a listen. It’s scary, and I’ll never forget it.
We had to stay hunkered down for about 20 minutes, and they finally gave us the all-clear. The roof stayed on the building, and our cars remained in the parking lot. I was kinda hoping my Suzuki would get swept-up and sling-shotted to the outskirts of Hazleton or whatever. Then I could use the insurance money to buy a reasonable vehicle. Oh well.
It turned out to be nothing, which I’m obviously happy about. And, thankfully, I’ve never experienced a truly catastrophic weather event or natural disaster. I’ve had a tasting of many: earthquakes, mudslides, and wildfires in California, countless tornado watches and warnings, outrageous snow storms, and even a weakened hurricane in Atlanta which was still no joke by the time it got to us.
What about you? What are the worst or scariest weather/natural disaster situations you’ve faced? Please tell us about it in the comments section.
And I need to call it a day here, my friends. Toney and I are going to NYC on Saturday, with absolutely no plans or expectations. We’re taking an old lady “shopper’s special” bus, and just spending the day (many, many hours) in Manhattan. I’ll tell you all about it on Monday. It should be fun. If you’d care to contribute to our end o’ the day beer fund, I’m not going to turn that down. Those things cost about $12 each over there. Sweet sainted mother of Sixto Lezcano!
Have a great weekend, boys and girls.
I’ll see you again soon.
Now playing in the bunker
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Wow, a few things to unpack here…
“…everybody’s cell phones began screeching like a mental patient who just got triggered by “Surfin’ Bird.”” I laughed so hard I fell out of my chair.
Lived through Hurricane Fran here in Raleigh back in ’95. Category 1 force winds this far inland with lots and lots of big oak and pine trees just ready to give up their tenuous purchase in the ground. No power for 7 days in the sweltering September humidity and the sound of chainsaws and lumber trucks for months.
A couple years back I took my kids bowling when a big storm came up. All of a sudden they herded us to the MIDDLE of the bowling alley (in the center of the center lanes) and the power went out. About 15 minutes later the power was back on and we finished bowling. Drove home and realized tornadoes had cut a swath through downtown Raleigh, destroying just about everything in its path only about 5 miles form the bowling alley.
Enjoy NYC. We were up there a few weeks back and discovered the enjoyment of renting the CitiBikes instead of using the subway for short trips. Great fun but not for the faint of heart in NYC traffic.
I was in Raleigh for Fran as well. It was so hot and muggy afterwards that I left town after a few days without power.
I have been in very rough seas.
And I was caught in a hail storm once that took down some trees and punched holes into the tops of some trailers.
I’ve spent my entire life in the northeast, where the snow can suck, but the disasters are relatively minor.
I’ll bet the most memorable thing about NYC will be all the freakin’ walking. Let us know.
April 3, 1974 in Cincinnati. Saw one tornado on the horizon about 6 miles away, tearing apart the west side of Cincy. Saw another tornado at the same time about half a mile south of us that went on to skip through the subdivision behind us.
In 1980 I spotted a wall cloud coming right at us (it appeared) and instead of taking cover I hung out the window (we lived on a hillside) and took pictures! (I’d post it here but I can’t.)
Other non-related disasters: passing O’Hare airport less than 2 miles away when a DC-10 crashed on take-off in 1979. Sitting on the runway awaiting take-off to Toronto on 9/11 at Dulles Airport.
Blizzard of ’78 was pretty cool. Missed a whole week of high school.
Was two weeks. One of them was Feb vacation.
I saw the same storm on that day, only I was roughly 5 miles from Xenia, Ohio when most of it was scrubbed off the map. I will never forget the color of the sky and the eerie stillness that came right before it struck. Tornadoes still freak me out to this day! My kids make fun of me because I kick into high alert when the skies darken and swirl. If you need me, I’ll be hiding in the southwest corner of my basement, thank-you-very-much!
I forgot about that. And there was one in the mid 1990s sometime. I recall having a whole week off from College. Everything was shut down. I think I have photos of that one.
When I was a kid in MN, my folks woke me and my brother up on night and dragged us down into the cellar. On the way down, we saw the vivid lightning and heard the continuous thunder but we weren’t worried because we were with mom and dad. The next morning we went in the yard and noticed that all the siding on the back of the house was splintered but none of the windows were broken. There were fist sized rocks everywhere in the grass. We found out later that a tornado touched down along the train tracks 6 blocks west of us, sucked up a couple thousand tons of railway ballast rock and proceeded to randomly scour houses in the neighborhood. The worst part was picking up all of those rocks.
I live in New England now…hurricanes in my lifetime haven’t been too bad but we’ve had a couple of wazoo blizzards (36″ of snow, high winds) that wrecked the area. No power for 10 days and all the booze, milk and white bread within 50 miles was gone.
Nothing too horrific here.
Hurricane Isabel in 2003. A tree around the corner from me fell across the road, blocking it for a few days. This is why I don’t live in a cul-de-sac. The Mid-Atlantic derecho in 2013, in which my power was out for 14 hours.
My parents, however, were without power for several days due to Hurricane Sandy, and they were trapped in a high-rise apartment building in NYC. But they were prepared for it. My mom said later that really the worst part was not being able to flush the toilet.
Speaking of which: Jeff, enjoy NYC! There, everyone is your friend.
Thanks, Chill. Words and music by Lisa Marr and her wonderful band, Cub; cover by They Might Be Giants on their underappreciated 1996 album, Factory Showroom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSS_ty5o7x4
John
Ahh, tornado warnings. I live in North Alabama, the tornado warning capital of the country. The Midwest/Kansas has nothing on us. Its flat out there, you can see those things coming. We got hills and mountains that seem to funnel tornadic weather right through the Tennessee Valley, otherwise known as Tornado Alley.
I lived through the big one in 1989, an F4 with winds measuring 260mph that killed 21, injured 463, and mowed down several neighborhoods, shopping centers, and an elementary school.
We were also witness to the April 2011 tornado outbreak, during which an astounding 62 tornadoes tore paths across much of northern and central Alabama. North Alabama, Huntsville in particular, was without power for nearly a week after TVA transmission lines were obliterated by an F4-F5 twister.
Around here, every school is now built with a tornado shelter, and my office on a military installation has numerous “safe rooms” in every building.
Its nothing to hear the outdoor sirens go off, and for tv to be interrupted for constant weather coverage.
As a long time resident, I can decipher weather speak with the best of them. TORCON rating, wind sheer marker, wall cloud, vortex, super-cell…that’s just regular conversation around here.
Spring and Fall are our busy weather event seasons. Its always scary, and you pray your house doesn’t get flattened, but there is nothing you can do to stop it. Its just a part of life now, we prepare as best we can.
We had an above ground tornado shelter installed in our garage. Its a 4×6 reinforced steel room bolted through the floor into the ground. We keep bottled water, bicycle helmets, sturdy shoes, and at least 2 firearms in there. I’ll be damned if a looting POS is going to get what little is left after my house is blown apart.
Lew, I feel for you; do you mind if I name my next album Tornadic Weather? Thanks.
John
Redstone Arsenal? Gosh, I miss that place.
Have you read What Stands in a Storm? That day in April was horrible. I have several friends and family that lost homes, but luckily none lost lives. I drive by places that were destroyed every day. i guess you’re in a different TV market from me, but we have our beloved James Spann for weather. You know it’s getting real when his suit coat comes off.
In Northwest Arkansas when Garrett rolled up his sleeves you knew the weather meant business.
I was in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. I was absolutely certain I would die while it was happening, and I’d grown up with earthquakes, so it was shocking that a serious one was actually happening. We had no power for a week, there were helicopters all over the place and the air in my neighborhood was smoky from the fire in the Marina District, which was over the hill from us. A guy was murdered in the alley across the street from us, I guess somebody taking advantage of the lack of power. It was like being in a war zone. Even today, I’ll tense up if the ground shakes, like if I’m in the car on a bridge and the deflection causes it to shake a bit. Freaks me out like you wouldn’t believe.
No tornadoes, though.
July 16th, 1980. The “Green Storm” (technically a derecho) hit Detroit’s western and southern suburbs. I was eleven and it was the first time I had really been in the path of frightening and potentially deadly weather. There’s a good deal of info on the internet about this event, but suffice to say it remains a vivid memory: the dark green sky that gave the storm its name, the wind that pushed lombardy poplar trees until they were horizontal with the ground, the squashed and split trees from downdrafts and wind shear, collapsed garages, the roof of a Sears blown sideways, dead birds everywhere, and the nearly two-week power outage that followed. I’ve been in worse storms since then, but nothing compares to the Green Storm.
Had a tornado go through here(Union City, PA) a couple years ago. It cut a relatively narrow swath through town touching down here and there. There were a lot of trees and such down. We had it cut through our back yard, where it knocked down the 4 big old pine trees, and blew a bunch of big maple branches onto our car in the driveway. The car was totalled, but the trees fell away from the house. We were damn’ lucky. The only thing it did to our house, was toss the grill cover onto the back roof, and pluck a wind chime off the side of the house and toss it a few feet to the bottom of the steps. It was like it was thumbing its nose at us, saying, ‘just think what I *could* have done.’ All happened so quick, we barely had time to be scared before it was over, but I sure wouldn’t ever want to be in a worse one!
Experienced 3 or 4 26″-28″ snowfalls. Never life-threatening but a ridiculous amount of work to get out it. Was vacationing in Myrtle Beach in 2012 when “Superstorm” Sandy came right through my town in NJ. Couldn’t get home for 4 days, and power was still out when we returned. Almost every road blocked by a tree at some point. Some co-workers were without power for over two weeks. Luckily had purchased the travel insurance in case of a hurricane in MYRTLE BEACH, not NJ! Fortunately very rare to get a hurricane or tornado up here.
Northern Ohio, April 1965. My parents pulled my brother and I out of bed at around 10 pm and into the basement. A few minutes later it sounded like the house exploded. A while later after it quieted down we tried to get back up into the kitchen but when my Dad finally got the door open there was a huge tree standing up in kitchen blocking our way out.
We all got out through the coal chute and could see an enormous oak tree that was torn from somewhere by the tornado and dropped through the roof of our kitchen. It was standing pretty much straight up and from the front of the house it looked like it had grown right there. I remember my Dad saying, “Well isn’t this a real load of shit” The back of the house was destroyed and it took a year to get it to the point we could move back.
Wasn’t there a Tornado that ripped Zanesville apart sometime in the early 70’s. My sister lived close to there, but I am not sure on the time frame.
It was so foggy once the London Underground shut down, so only pubs in walking distance we available. No Greene King or Frazzles! We still talk of the great fog of ’92 this day.
Obviously I have a fully prepped bunker today.
Since I grew up on the West Coast, I’ve only experienced earthquakes. 1971, 1989, 1992, 1994. These are the bigger ones that make the news.
The ground shakes all the time and you feel some but not all. Now we’re waiting for an earthquake that will cause some real damage to the PNW.
The 1987 Whittier Narrows quake was only a 5.9, but being only 15 miles away in Long Beach it was more alarming to us than the Northridge quake in ’94. It didn’t help that the ’87 quake was after we got up in the morning, so we heard that sucker coming…as opposed to the ’94 freeway-buster that prompted everybody awake at 0430. You could tell from the jerkiness that the ’87 quake was nearby, and I had two sets of grandparents living in different neighborhoods of Whittier. One merely got a new crack across the livingroom ceiling, but the other set were out of town and when my dad went to check on their house ALL of the kitchen cabinet contents were thrown onto the floor, grandma’s teacup collection had been shaken in its display case, blown glass pieces jumped off wall units, etc. For the rest of their lives after that, EVERY cabinet door had a rubber band or lock on it and every teacup/vase had putty holding it down. My brothers and I were just glad their in-ground swimming pool didn’t crack!! Our system for assessing an ‘adequate’ quake was whether dad bothered to get out of bed in the middle of the night. The ’94 had him steadying our 60-gallon fish tank so it didn’t sway/slosh too much on its stand, and he told us that in the 70s there was an earthquake where he WOKE UP already running. Gotta love growing up in the red zone:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/California_Department_of_Conservation_%E2%80%93_Earthquake_Shaking_Potential_for_California.jpg
Oh, AND there were a couple tornadoes in Long Beach (in southern California!!) in the late 90s. One ripped part of the roof off a local grocery store, relocated a couple vehicles in the parking lot, and downed a tree ON OUR STREET.
Sigh…let’s see. Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Hurricane Rita a month later, and Gustav in 2008. Had damage from all three, but it was manageable. Fast forward to August 2016. The Great Flood of 2016. We weren’t in a flood zone and still got fifteen feet of water in the back yard (where it is much lower) and two feet in our house. Still reeling. Still trying to climb out of it. And definitely not ready for the water that Hurricane Harvey is threatening.
Other than that…
I live in a major city in Illinois (not Chicago). We’ve seen a lot of shit in 50+ years, tornadoes, earthquakes, flooding, ice storms. Since I’m in a metro area I don’t scare too easy.
I have to laugh at all the stupid fucks who make a run on every grocery and convenience store for French Toast supplies (milk, bread, eggs) every dam time the sky gets cloudy. We’ve had some serious shit here a few times, and you know what, aside from a couple times when power was out for a week, we really didn’t have too many inconveniences. Every time, the supply trucks got through, grocery stores were stocked up, trees and debris cleared, and life went on.
Wonder how much milk, bread, and eggs get thrown away after each storm because they went bad? And I wonder why the fascination with French Toast in our country!
Disclaimer, I’m talking about people in the Midwest. I have friends who lived through Andrew in FLA, and I get the need for organized panic prior to a storm in hurricane country – they had NO TOWN left afterwards, lived off National Guard supplies and water for a few days until they could secure a ride out of town, and never went back.
All of the big southern California earthquakes since 1971, and now several bad desert sandstorms, flash floods and wildfires.
In the late 80s, I remember walking out of our apartment complex with a couple of friends and my mom to head to school and seeing cars bouncing up and down in their parking spots during one particularly frightening earthquake. We’d always been so blase about them before, but my friends and I freaked out pretty good that day.
Memphis had a gigantic ice storm in 1994. Everything was frozen solid for three or four days. Limbs and even whole trees were snapped off and power lines were down everywhere. Some people were without for two or three weeks in the dead of winter. I was 17 and took my 73 beetle to the local church parking lot and did some tremendous donuts!
I left our local WalMart when they tried herding us into the back of the building due to a tornado ‘warning’. I walked outside, saw nothing so started driving home. About 1/2 mile from home I noticed a driver in an oncoming car was sitting stopped and was taking pics from behind the wheel. So I turned right, crested a hill and saw the tornado and entire house rooftops flying through the air. I made it home, yelled at my family to get under the stairs (they were already there) and 20 seconds after I got under the stairs, an F4 tornado destroyed my house and dropped my deck/garage wall on my motorcycles. Over 800 houses in our town were destroyed, another 200 heavily damaged. I will NOT ever ignore a tornado warning again. Pic here: https://stewey.smugmug.com/Weather/Weather/n-2P5WP/i-RfhpSsw/A