Saturday, July 15, 2006
Tornadoes and Trains
There was a really bad storm here yesterday; the sky turned black and just opened up; it was like standing under Niagara Falls. Well, if Niagara Falls had a bowling alley.
Or maybe it was like being trapped inside a giant bongo drum, with out-of-control strobe lights.
Whatever, it beat all the blossoms off all my flowers, and carved deep erosion trails in the driveway. But we were lucky.
Just down the road, huge trees were down. One big tree fell across a house. A big metal flagpole was bent in half.
The trail of destruction was in a straight path, almost as if. . . . .
I hope Toto is somewhere safe.
Scattered showers? The people in town had a hard rain, but it wasn't that big a deal. Out here in the country, we very nearly saw the Emerald City.
This being the particular Southern Indiana town that it is, there are railroad tracks criss-crossing everywhere you turn. (A much-used track runs right through our downtown!) When it's storming, there is invariably a long train going through on the track behind our woods. "They" say that a tornado sounds like a train, so I often panic during a bad storm because just as the hail starts, a train blows its horn.
Fifteen years ago there really was a tornado back there. It was a huge terrible one, and if it had veered left instead of right, our house would be a memory. Because of all the trees, we couldn't see it, but we could sure hear it.
It wiped out hundreds of homes and businesses, and a few people, and even after all these years, you can still see the damage if you look closely at the trees alongside the river.
Witnesses say that when the tornado crossed the river, it cut a swath through the water, showing, for a split second behind it, the river bottom, and it looked dry.
I guess each part of the planet has its own unique natural disasters to worry about. At least, here, we don't have to worry about hurricanes or sandstorms. Not yet, anyway.
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