Twisters twisters in the night

To our West.  Image from the Dayton Daily News

So we were in the path of those tornados that swept through the Midwest last night.  Just to our west, the worst of the tornados - at least as of now - hit and did much damage.  At least three were killed by the storms.  In these parts tornados are usually of the weaker variety.  But in recent years, especially in the last couple, the storms have growing in frequency and severity.  I've noted the sudden shift in weather in just the last couple years.  

Fortunately for us, the cell that produced the tornado suddenly swung south and then after it passed, turned east again.  It weakened a bit as it approached us, and then strengthened.  It looks like places farther to the east also got hit hard.  

This is the fifth tornado I've been through, including two that hit right next to where I was at the time.  When I was little, about four years old, a tornado cut a path right up to our house and then 'jumped' over our property.  In Florida, I was getting ready for work when a tornado hit and cut travel across the intercoastal bridges, leaving me stranded.  

Apparently when I was an infant, my mom was home with my sister and me while Dad was at work.  A tornado hit the town then (that town has been hit before, owing to its place in the Ohio landscape) while she kept rocking in her rocking chair.   

And finally when I was a pastor in Southern Indiana, our church was one of the few buildings with a basement.  So we were assigned to make sure the doors were opened in case of something like a tornado outbreak.  One night it hit, while the Final Four was going on (prompting those basketball obsessed Hoosiers to constantly apologize for having to break from the important stuff to talk about all of that saving our lives gibberish).  

And now this.  I will say this, the stories are true.  Of the three tornados that hit when I was able to see the conditions, it's just like they say.  First you have the storms, massive winds, lightning, downpours and hail.  Then silence.  A dead, suffocating silence.  And then it hits.  The two times I heard the tornadoes actually hit nearby, it does sound like a locomotive.  

And they are fickle things.  Back in 1974 during what they called The Super-Outbreak, my dad was at work on the railroad.  He stayed where he was, since it takes only the strongest tornadoes to damage a railroad engine.  So he kept on moving, watching the distance as he crossed no fewer than four of the tornadoes that night.  He said there's no sense trying to plot a course and guess.  They jumped around like rabbits, appearing here, vanishing there, reappearing a mile later.    

So having gone through number five, I hope that's it.  We were fortunate, though others weren't.  Our prayers for them while the state digs out of the second outbreak of tornados in almost as many weeks.  Again, nobody denies the climate changes.  And it's tough not to see a sudden shift in weather patterns.  It's approaching it scientifically and realistically that most people want, not doing the political thing that dominates the disucssion nowadays.