horrible tornado

89 people killed in Joplin, Missouri? The story is HERE.

I tend to suspect global warming has a role in these new super-tornadoes we’re seeing. Previously, all the huge death-toll tornadoes in history were in the days before metereologists and radio/TV could warn everyone to take cover. Now the warnings don’t seem to help much: we’re seeing more cases of tornadoes two miles in diameter, and other crazy things like that.

I grew up in Iowa, which was considered tornado country. Kansas was always #1 for tornadoes in those days, but we considered Iowa to belong to an elite group of victim states. However, I think that was more the case in the middle of the last century, and I was at the tail end of that period. These days it seems that most of the really destructive tornadoes are in the South: Alabama, Florida, places like that.

Iowa City was hit with a pretty bad one in the spring of 2006, though somehow only 1 person was killed, and not even in the city itself. Supposedly a tornado went directly over my hometown when I was in Kindergarten, but I wasn’t in school that day and have no memory of the incident.

The worst I ever saw was a funnel cloud outside Grinnell, while riding home from Des Moines one day. Never saw a full-blown tornado.

The way you know a tornado is coming, or at least the plausible folk tradition about it, is a strange color in the sky that’s hard to describe. Sort of a weird greenish tint with hints of luminescence. I’ve seen that tint many times, and though it’s been at least 20 years since the last time, I’d recognize it even now.