Bad Weather
April. May. June. Tornado season in the Midwest.
It’s Monday evening, and I’m already stressing about the potential for strong thunderstorms and potential tornadoes across Missouri tomorrow. Just last week towns in at least nine states suffered severe tornadic storms, including Arkansas, Mississippi, Illinois, and Indiana.
My home state of Missouri averages 32 tornadoes a year, usually with only a handful of deaths attributed to them. Most of our tornados are small and short-lived. They can happen year-round, but April, May, and June are the peak of the season here.
In May of 2011 the city of Joplin, in the state’s southwest corner, took a direct hit from an F5 tornado. It was reported to be on the ground for 38 minutes. They say it killed 158 people.
That monster storm was nearly a mile wide. A nightmare for those who lived through it.
I watched the news reports from the safety of western Washington, a state that I’d moved to in the fall of 2006. That had been an especially active spring, spawning 102 tornadic storms across Missouri.
For most of my adult life, I’d been living ninety miles to the north of Joplin, in Bates County, and in the spring and summer of 2006, I’d spent 16 nights sleeping in other people’s basements.
