belhoste

Having spent most of my life in Oklahoma, I don’t spend too much time worrying about tornadoes. I know they are going to come here, so my house is not located in Moore (which has a 6 or 7 mile stretch that has been regularly wiped out by tornadoes). Right now Oklahoma is in the midst of tornado season. All that really means to me is that I need to check the weather before I travel. It also means that I will occasionally look up at the sky once or twice a day to see if there are any wall clouds forming in my general vicinity. I am not a meteorologist, but I am much better at predicting severe weather than the newscasters in California (where they can record a week of weather forecasts in advance) or even Utah (the state where you see at least 10 different kinds of snow within one week, but you still won’t get much more than “we’re going to have some snow this week” out of the local weather). Which means that I can pull up the weather radar and determine whether or not it is a good day to go roller-blading or kite flying or if I am just better off staying in the house watching a bad SciFi movie.

All this leads me to an interesting comment from a dear sweet relative of mine. Her children have an “odd fear of tornadoes” but they have never been to Oklahoma and have never experienced a tornado up close and personal. While most Oklahomans just take a tornado siren in stride, her kids would probably just freak out  just hearing Gary England say “hook echo“. I wonder what they would think of all those amateur storm chasers out there?

I have weathered through several tornadoes including the May 3, 1999, tornado and I still don’t have any fear associated with them (not exactly sure what that says about me though). Although, it seems that their fear of tornadoes may not be all that uncommon.