I grew up in west-central Indiana and have memories of being hustled into the interior bathroom by my Mom and of sitting in the hallways at school in the “tornado position”.
I used to have heart-pounding, panic-inducing dreams in late April / early May (about the time the local stations were reminding us that it was tornado season) and I could never figure out why. (I’m not prone to remembering my dreams.) I mentioned it to my Mom and she told me how we had been visiting relatives in northeastern IN and spent the trip back home dodging the Palm Sunday tornadoes of 1965. We figure that the dreams were memories of my three year old self reacting to my parents emotions.
Funny thing is, since moving to NC 12 years ago, I haven’t had a single tornado dream.
Give me hurricanes. I can more easily control the way I react to them. You’ve got DAYS to prep for those.
Exactly - you know how you escape the terrifying big bad hurricane? You move inland a couple hundred miles. You pack the dog and the kids and your neighbors into the car and you just relocate yourself for a day if need be. Also, you don’t live on the coast in the first place. Here in Columbia Hugo was terrifying, and there were a lot of trees down, but there’s no storm surge.
You know how you escape the tornado? You don’t because it comes like a thief in the night and so you have to huddle in a bathtub or a basement, and it’s a good thing we don’t have tornadoes here much because we haven’t got any basements either.
When I was a kid I first found out about tornados in a book I read. It terrified me. After that, I would always run to the basement at the first hint of a bad thunderstorm. Once there was a thunderstorm during school and I was such a wreck they almost called my parents.
Eventually, I started reading more about them, watching weather shows, etc. I stopped being terrified and became curious. Now I really want to see one.
I kind of like the hurricanes, in the abstract sense (I mean, obviously not in the dying-and-losing-your-house sense.) They’re like Nature saying “Fuck you. Fuck you and fuck all your friends. This is how I get my mojo going.” They’re amazing creatures - really beautiful when you see them on the weather map, or in that footage the storm spotting planes take. And when you think about the fact that in 1900 there could be one screaming through the Gulf and people in Galveston have no idea it’s coming… they’re terrifying but also awesome, in the old fashioned sense of “awesome”. I went outside when Hugo’s eye passed over us and it was, no contest, the strangest thing I have ever seen in my life. Even stranger when you realize what it is - the space between massive enormous walls of storm. Sometimes you just have to hand it to the old gal Nature - when she decides to do something, she doesn’t go halfway.
That being said, when they tell you to, you evacuate. Do not stick around on the barrier island to “watch the storm”.
I had an irrational fear of tornadoes when I was a kid. Irrational because I live in New Jersey. I grew out of it. We do get them on occasion. Usually they are so small that there is some debate as to if it was a tornado or not.
no worries! blizzards are doable, and not too bad if you live in boston proper. you make a lot of french toast!
hurricanes, now they do happen… just not so very often. the water rarely gets tropical warm and they have to get past the n.c. bump out. if they do get past the bump out (sudden sea) they usually hit ny, ct, and ri much harder. they are around a cat 1 or trop. storm. however hurricanes do love to throw tornados and floods at you if they can’t get to you directly.
the big thing is nor’east’rs! they just love to pop up and ram into and run up the coast. they do quite a bit of damage. the “perfect storm” was a nor’east’r helped by the bits and bobs of hurricane grace. blizzards a good portion of the time are nor’east’rs. we can thank mr. franklin for figuring out this weather system and coming up with the name.