I've been reading all the Britblogs about a particularly nice thunderstorm yesterday, and it just makes me so nostalgic.
I grew up in Minnesota which is situated at the top of the US, right in the center. It's the state that the Mississippi river flows out of (if that helps the geographically challenged). The state is part plains and part forest and lot's of lakes (Land O' Lakes products come from there). But because it is on the edge of the plains, it gets really intense and beautiful thunderstorms - and not a few tornadoes.
I can remember having all the lights go out, seeing the windows start to bow in from the pressure of the wind, and rushing down to the dank and scary basement - trying desparately to think which was the NW corner (conventional wisdom saying that was the safest one to be in). I remember the haunting sounds of the tornado sirens at night...wondering if it was safe to go to sleep...but never really seriously thinking that I could be hurt. Once when we were up north for a fishing week, I remember sitting in the cabin and watching squall lines race across the lake.
The energy of thunderstorms is amazing - the feel of the wind hot and cold against your cheek, the hard rain and the thunder and lightening...which we'd count between to see how far away the center of the storm was.
Thunderstorms, when they occur here, never get terribly fierce (although there is the occassional tornado), and I miss them...I miss that wildness.
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4 comments:
We really don't get tornados over here. When I was in Ohio, we were driving up the I75 in really bad weather & our guide pointed out how we should watch the clouds for sighns of a tornado. We never saw anything but just the thought that we might had me really excited.
Sometimes you just have to bow before the power of nature, eh?
You would have loved to have been home here this week. Last night and the night before, we had some major storms, complete with that eerie "wizard of oz" green sky and hail up to the size of walnuts. Lorelei was mesmerized by the rain pelting the slider off the deck, while Yaeger couldn't make himself small enough in the corner. Ah, summertime in MN...
Kara
When I was on holiday in Florida we heard there was a Tornado on the way and me and my Dad and uncle sat up late watching all the warnings on the TV, it passed really close to us apparently, only 2 blocks away.
The nearest we over here have ever had to a tornado is the gales of about '87 (don't quote me on the date) and I remember getting really exciting cos they blew the school roof off!
Britain has the funniest climate - it's neither one thing nor the other. It's never really very hot, and it's never really very cold. It's just kind of in the middle all the time, switching every few hours from weak sun, to light rain, to mildly windy to very still - all in the same day.
We don't much get extremes of anything, and when we get a little bit more of something than usual (sun, snow, wind, rain... whatever) the whole country grinds to a halt and it makes the front cover of the papers.
It's no wonder we talk about the weather all the time, eh?
A Brisbane blogger (OLS) made me laugh the other day when she was talking about how unseasonably cold it was, and in the same post talked about the pool in her appartment block.... oh come on!
Sigh.
Having said all that, I don't fancy tornados much.
ST
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