"TORNADOES FOR DUMMYS"

"While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house:
And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee." (Job 1:18-19)

There are very few references to tornadoes in the Bible. This, I believe, is one of them. Here we are told that while Job's young adult children were partying at the oldest brother's home, a "great wind from the wilderness" came, the house fell down, and all Job's offspring were killed.

I ask that no one take my title, "Tornadoes For Dummys" too literally! It's meant to be "tongue in cheek". In this piece, I intend to share some basic information about tornadoes (and the so-called "tornado alley" region of the U.S.A.) that most New Englanders and others from the northeastern U.S. are unaware of. I would imagine that friends and family of mine who live in the midwest and deep south (that includes my daughter and son-in-law who live in southwestern Missouri!) will get a good laugh from reading this piece and will be stunned to read that most natives of New England and the northeast know so little about tornadoes. The flip side of that scenario is that folks from the northeast get a big laugh every winter when they realize that most people from "tornado alley" don't know how to drive in snow, and most communities in that part of the country do a very poor job of plowing and snow removal!

The devastation of the Moore, Oklahoma tornado is mind-boggling. My heart goes out to that community. It should also be mentioned that shortly before the Moore tornado, there was a devastating tornado in Shawnee, Oklahoma which has gotten very little coverage. I've heard New Englanders make comments in the wake of the Oklahoma tornadoes such as, "Why would anybody be foolish enough to live there?"...or..."Why would anyone living in Oklahoma be dumb enough to not have a basement?!" (Well, in New England, they don't say "basement" they say "cellar"!)...or..."Why would they be stupid enough to build a new home right there which can be leveled by a tornado all over again?" In my opinion, the most annoying comment by New Englanders about the whole "tornado alley" thing is, "I'm so glad I live in the northeast were we don't have tornadoes!"

I think I will deal with that last comment first. In fact, the northeastern United States does have tornadoes! Every one of the forty-eight contiguous states has had tornadoes at one time or other. It is true they are most common in the midwest, especially Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Arkansas. But tornadoes have happened in the northeast, even within the past decade. I believe there were two pretty good sized tornadoes that hit Brooklyn, New York (of all places!) over the past ten years and did a substantial amount of damage! Can we forget that several tornadoes ravaged western and central Massachusetts on June 1, 2011? That event involved fatalities. Many homes in the small town of Monson, MA (pronounced "MUN-sen") were leveled. A (confirmed) very small tornado damaged a Ford dealership in Stoughton, Massachusetts (just south of Boston) earlier this month. Great Barrington, in the southwestern corner of Massachusetts had a pretty bad tornado strike in 1995. It's before my time, but on June 9, 1953, several tornadoes struck Worcester County, Massachusetts. There were ninety-four fatalities that day. My friends in Framingham may not realize that one of these tornadoes did substantial damage in Southborough which borders Framingham. We are not exempt from tornadoes in the northeast!

One big mistake that New Englanders make is they think a tornado is a tornado is a tornado. Not true! Some tornadoes are very small and do minimal damage. There's that whole Fujita Scale (now the Enhanced Fujita Scale) which rates Tornadoes from EF-1 through EF-5. An EF-5 tornado is much, much bigger than an EF-1 tornado and much, much more powerful. Perhaps one out of a thousand tornadoes is an EF-5 tornado. They are very rare. Sadly, that tornado in Moore, Oklahoma was an EF-5 tornado. An EF-5 tornado can be well over a mile wide. It can have winds of well over 200 M.P.H. The size and force is incredible. Such a tornado will pretty much level and devastate a community- leaving it demolished and unrecognizable. Such was the case in Moore, OK. It's likely that the tornado which hit the Ford dealership in Stoughton, MA was actually an EF-Zero- probably not even quite an EF-1. Such a tornado is small...maybe the size of an average house and barely has the corkscrew shape and rotation of a tornado. Even so, you would not want your house to be hit by even an EF-Zero tornado. It could tear all or part of a roof off. It could blow out a window or two. It could tear off some vinyl siding. It's a nuisance no one needs. But it's far from what hit in Oklahoma this week.

I went to Bible College in Springfield, Missouri for two years. During that time, I lived through only one tornado warning. It was in the spring of 1979. At around 11 a.m. it became very dark, almost as dark as night. The tornado sirens went off. I was with a bunch of other students in the lower floor of "Bowie" the oldest building on campus. We were there listening to the radio for a half hour or so. There was heavy rain and a bad thunder storm. Funnel clouds passed over the city of Springfield that day. I believe in a few small towns there were tornadoes, but in Springfield, we were spared. My daughter Amy went to college for four years in Springfield, Missouri and has now lived there for six years after her graduation. In school, she experienced a lot more tornado warnings than I did and Springfield has many more "dicey" weather situations than when I was a student there. I was visiting Springfield, Missouri in May of 2009 when the tornado sirens went off. I turned on the television set and learned that a tornado had touched down in the adjacent town of Republic and was heading for the southern part of the city of Springfield. It got very windy outside, and the neighborhood sustained substantial tree damage. I was by myself in the bathtub and pretty nervous. My daughter was working as a nurse at Cox South Medical Center where a tornado passed right through their parking lot that morning. It was a very small tornado...probably an EF-Zero or EF-1. That day at a high school just outside Springfield, Missouri, a wall fell down and their brand new weight room was destroyed. Several houses in Missouri were leveled that morning and there were a few fatalities.

This gets back to the whole thing of "Why live there?!" Let me tell you something, my good friend the Rev. Debby Seler has written on-line in the past few days of the wonderful faith-filled people of Oklahoma and what an example they are for us. (Note: Debby and her husband Denny are former residents of Springfield, Missouri.) I agree with Debby about those people. Listen, you'll never meet finer people than you'll meet in the midwest, and especially in the southern part of the midwest. They're old-fashioned "religious" hard-working conservative patriotic people. They're the kind of people who will "give you the shirt off their back". One of my favorite movies is Robert Duvall's "The Apostle". In the commentary track on the D.V.D., Duvall states how much he loves the people and culture in that area and that it really bothers him the way people from either coast call their home area "flyover territory" and look down on the people from there. I used to like to watch "Friday Night Lights" just because of that whole lower midwest "feel" and culture. My daughter Amy has come to love that culture and life and frankly, I do, too! Honestly, the only thing I don't like about that area is there's no ocean! If I were to move there, I'd try to come to New England for just a few days each summer to "hit" Cape Cod, put my feet in the water, and enjoy the coastal atmosphere. It may surprise some of my friends that I would move to "tornado alley" in a heartbeat. No kidding.

Now, back to the "For Dummys" thing, there's something else some northeasterners do not understand. There is a huge difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning. A tornado watch just means conditions are favorable to produce tornadoes. In the event of a tornado watch, there may be tornadoes and there may not be tornadoes. If a tornado watch is issued, say, for Middlesex County, MA, you'll hear things like, "Get in the cellah, theah's gonna be a tornado!!" Well, you really don't have to get into the cellar (or basement) until there is a tornado warning. And, regarding the thing about folks in "tornado alley" having no basements/cellars: well, some do but most don't. It has a lot to do with the water table. In most of "tornado alley" it's just not practical or workable to have basements. They'd be flooded constantly and I mean constantly. Now, I will say, when I stay at my daughters in Missouri I'm always intrigued by television commercials from a company called "Missouri Storm Shelters". They sell metal storm shelters in which you can ride out any tornado situation confidently. Most people don't own them because they're quite expensive, but I think if I ever do live in "tornado alley" I'd want to have one of those storm shelters!