Weather..

My heart goes out to all of those affected by the tornadoes yesterday.  I have friends in the area and hopefully they're all alright. :)

I grew up in "Tornado Alley".  As a child, I was terrified of tornadoes.  Took a long time to be unafraid of them.  I was lucky that we had close calls, but none actually hit us.  Living in Iowa, we had a basement.  That's where we would go when weather turned bad.  I remember as a kid - we'd have drills for fire and tornadoes.  I also remember visiting my grandparents in Texas and seeing the bad storms and asking them where their basement was (they didn't have one).

I apparently have taken this weather thing to an extreme.  I've had a few birthdays where the tornadoes have come close (my birthday is in March) to where I was living.  Heck, when I moved to LA, we had a tornado hit there as well.  But while living in LA, I lived through Riots, Floods, Mudslides, Fires and Earthquakes.  Then when I moved back to the East Coast near DC, I apparently became a hurricane magnet.  They liked to follow me when I was traveling during August & September.  Needless to say, I try not to travel during those time frames anymore.  And my in-laws who live in Florida are grateful :D


We are in the season of bad storms.  I have a feeling we're just getting started, with the weather that has been crazy lately.  Storms are probably worse these days than in the past for a few reasons:  more people so more populated areas and better equipment than in the past that can track things that we didn't have in the past.  We can't guess as to how bad storms were in the long past, as many records weren't kept.

Regardless of what happens, please keep all in your thoughts and prayers that have to deal with any major storms.  It's the least that we can do for them.