(no subject)

[littlelotte]

You learn so much having friends all over the country. Like...I can ramble on and on about tornados and my experiences with tornados, but I only have one earthquake aftershock experience that we felt all the way in Oklahoma in '92 or '93 and broke a porcelin carousel horse I had on a shelf :-( But with friends like Alley I get this:

KittenOfTheAlley: HOLY SHIT!
KittenOfTheAlley: we just had an earthquake.
KittenOfTheAlley: brb
Kyrie Truant: k
KittenOfTheAlley: Okay, only a 2.3
Kyrie Truant: ahhh...and what does a 2.3 feel like?
KittenOfTheAlley: Like you're standing on a firm water bed.
KittenOfTheAlley: You can see it here : http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/ca/STORE/X14151252/ciim_display.html
KittenOfTheAlley: Crap. There was an earthquake south of us also.
KittenOfTheAlley: That was a 5.6
KittenOfTheAlley: I wonder if THAT'S what I felt.

And then I start wandering around sites like http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/ca/ to learn more...

Comments

[winterswitchery.livejournal.com]

I've never seen a tornado beyond the dozens of tornado shows that I watch. What's it like?

[littlelotte.livejournal.com]

Terrifying. Throughout my life (that I remember) I've hidden in the following places during "omg it's really fucking close" times:

-a ditch with a mattress over my head with my mom and my big stuffed Fivel doll when I was about 5 because we lived in a trailer and didn't have a storm shelter
-the backroom area of a store just down the road when I was about six or seven--I don't remember if we had my brother yet
-a storm shelter numerous times when we finally got it when I was seven
-a "Long House" at the girl scout community camput when I was about nine with over a hundred other girls (this is where I first heard about the book Night of the Twisters from an older girl that was by our group. Years later I finally read it through a summer books-by-mail program I always did in the summer, and then once I moved to Michigan I saw that it had been made into a movie starring a favourite actor at the time)
-in our basement when we moved to Michigan

I can always tell when we're at least going to get a Tornado Watch now just be the looks of the sky and what the weather's been like. The atmosphere just feels so strange and surreal and eerie when a tornado is about to happen, and the sky gets such a horribly beautiful colour, and it's so hot and so humid. It gets so quiet. The tornado itself sounds identical to a train. And the rain before and after. And the most terrifying part is how fickle they are. They could destroy one house, and not touch a blade of grass in the next. They can destroy an entire neighborhood save one or two houses. They can destroy a house and leave a newly planted tree in its yard untouched.

I also remember the first time we had a warning after the shelter was put in. I was supposed to have a girl scout meeting that night. I remember going to the meeting after the warning had passed and it was storming really badly and being terrfied. We also got out of school early once because it was tornado weather.

There were so many nights spent up late listening to the radio reports of tornados around the state hoping they didn't come near us. So many times we had to crack the windows (to equalize the pressure if one hit) and listen wondering when we'd have to run for shelter.

I think this is why I was so terrified of storms when I was little--I didn't know what might or might not be a tornado. This is why I hate living by myself right now during tornado seasons. I get so scared.

[winterswitchery.livejournal.com]

Well admittedly you're now on the very fringe of the Tornado Belt than you used to be. Our tornado season in MI really picks up in later summer as opposed to the rest of the country. I can tell when watches will be issued too, I've seen a couple of funnel clouds but nothing else. Our county has been very blessed, most storms spawn in Calhoun, Hillsdale and Washtenaw (west, south and east of Jackson).