Cassi Creek: I grew
up in the tornado belt. I have gone
through seven with only minor or negligible damage and have never been injured
during one. I have been fortunate.
At one point
in time, I lived in a town of 26,000 that possessed only two warning sirens. Even more dangerous, the only local radio was
a 5,000-Watt sundowner. Since there was
a SAC air base abutting the town, and as the street I live on was mostly
populated by bomber and tanker pilots and radar-navigators, it became the practice
to go out into back yards and look toward the base if a warning was broadcast
over television stations 70 miles distant.
Those were days when
bombers armed with nuclear weapons stood alert along with support tankers,
crews ready to be airborne in minutes. Since there was no chance that either a BUFF
or a KC-135 could withstand a tornado, and since no one with normal
intelligence wanted to see what a tornado would do to a nuclear weapon; the alert
planes were scrambled off the alert pad and into the best evasive flight plan
possible.
Those of us
not on alert (or in the Air Force) would sit or stand in the oppressive darkness,
sweat pouring down our bodies in rivulets.
We’d watch for the lighting strikes as they became more frequent and
nearer to us. We’d wait for the
thunderous roar of the BUFFs as they clawed skyward, and the even louder roar
of the invisible funnel. We hoped to
near neither roar.
At some
point, if the warning was accurate and active, the mosquitoes would quit
biting, seeking their own shelter. There
was not a single dwelling in that town that had a basement outdoor storm
celllar. It sat on, and about 6 feet
below what had been a huge marsh adjoining the Mississippi River until the
levees were built in the 1930s. The only
protection available in most homes was the bathroom.
We watched
the alert planes scramble out one night about 2100. The distant TV stations had broadcast a
warning, the local radio was off the air, and the town was already without
power. Rain and hail were falling. The lightning flashes were nearly constant –
a useful marker for the presence of tornadic storms, as was tuning a broadcast
television to channel 2 and watching for the screen to display bright white
hash.
In those
moments waiting for the storm to blow through, not knowing whether the alert
planes scramble foretold the end of the civilized world or just the likely end
of people unable to fly out of the storm, it was academic in nature within 30
minutes. The planes flew around
consuming fuel before RTB and the tornado lifted as it crossed the air base’s
outer fence. One of my neighbors saw the
radar images that night. They displayed
a ½-mile wide tornado.
This, of
course, was back in the 1970’s. It could
have been a major event but it wasn’t in the end. Forecasting was much less developed
then. There aren’t many sundowner radio
stations now. TV stations will follow
dangerous storms and pump out information, often saving many lives. However, a downed power line or two can black
out large areas, leaving them no TV or radio.
We have a
NOAA weather radio. It is always on.
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