Mother Nature's Little Surprises

And some not so little.

As a native of Iowa, I did what Iowa boys do - when the tornado siren sounded, I’d go out on the back porch and have a look around, before making it to the basement. I saw my first funnel cloud when I was seven, before being unceremoniously hauled to the basement by one arm with my toes a foot off the floor. The next year an F1 picked up an empty semi going by, laid it on its side, and slid it a hundred yards down the shoulder. We got chased out of a softball game in junior high by a fingerling - a tornado the never reached the ground. The last one I recall being close to was the best - sitting in the Pamida parking lot on the east side of Estherville in the summer of 1983, waiting for friends to gather, and watching a thunderstorm cell passing over us. Suddenly the wind blew one way, then the other, and all the light debris in the parking lot when up in a spiral. It lasted all of fifteen seconds .

Today, thanks to putting an oligarch in charge of so called “ government efficiency” you, dear American citizen, are liable to get just fifteen seconds of warning via your own senses, rather than the tornado watch/warning we formerly had.

This affects pretty much everything to do with the weather and a bit with earthquakes, assuming they’re near or under the ocean. You don’t need to use science and stuff to understand the world, just pray more …