[NC211]

I use to live in Edmond from 1984 to 1987 as a pre-teen child. To this day, I can still hear the tornado that went through Edmond in 1986, how calm and still the air was, how the world seemed to just stop making noise right before it hit. As an adult now, having spent the majority of my adult life on the SE coast of the US, I've seen the eye of at least a half dozen hurricanes. Hurricanes don't scare me nearly as bad as a spring time thunder storm in Oklahoma. My parents spend the summer at their home on Grande Lake outside of Tulsa. My wife (who is southern) teases me on how alert and freaked out I tend to get when a thunder storm approaches. It's because of that tornado in Edmond some 26 years ago...

My heart aches for you guys, from the Washington, DC region.

Edit: Ooops, sorry, wrong thread, but still!

[nightbird47]

Originally Posted by NC211

I use to live in Edmond from 1984 to 1987 as a pre-teen child. To this day, I can still hear the tornado that went through Edmond in 1986, how calm and still the air was, how the world seemed to just stop making noise right before it hit. As an adult now, having spent the majority of my adult life on the SE coast of the US, I've seen the eye of at least a half dozen hurricanes. Hurricanes don't scare me nearly as bad as a spring time thunder storm in Oklahoma. My parents spend the summer at their home on Grande Lake outside of Tulsa. My wife (who is southern) teases me on how alert and freaked out I tend to get when a thunder storm approaches. It's because of that tornado in Edmond some 26 years ago...

My heart aches for you guys, from the Washington, DC region.

Edit: Ooops, sorry, wrong thread, but still!

Actually I think this has a lot to do with how we deal with things. I grew up in California. I remember rather vividly all the major quakes and it wasn't lost of us when the house shook enough stuff fell off shelves and it was centered a couple of counties away how much *could* happen. And my great aunt was in one of the unreinforced brick apartment buildings when the Long Beach quake hit and ran out of the door passing up family pictures and saving a frying pan. The scaryist from a distance are the swarms, when you get four or five smaller ones but hours apart and you live on nerves for a week. Everyone knows that big ones often start with small ones.

When the earth slips there is this instantanious cold freeze, even if its a nothing sort of quake. Not expecting one, the first little one I felt here woke me up but there was the heart racing moment anyway.

After that you get to be blase about it.

The last time we visited Alabama, where Dad's family is from, I remember being five and not being able to understand why dad was driving soooo fast and not stopping on the way home. I remember him especially hurring through Texas and guess he must have Oklahoma. Mom told me later there were active tornados forming and he just hurried the other way. Until may five years ago it was the only thought to tornados I'd ever had personally, but I wasn't scared at five.

When we were in Kansas five years ago and five minutes away from evacuation, I thought very clearly. I was at a convention and had the cash box and had to officially look calm for our members. But I was. We stayed, the storm went the other way and an hour and a half later we went to dinner under dry skies. It was fascinating but strange and new. I was approaching it from adult eyes not kids eyes. I won't say they are not scary but it really does matter that there is some warning and you can prepare. Instead of an instantanious freeze, I find I feel focused and other not important things go away like an adult. But quakes I grew up with. Tornados I didn't. I've seen pictures of crumpled buildings from them and the worse part of the smallish ones before I moved was knowing about the structural problems of the apartment, including how it sat on mud thanks to an ongoing water leak. Real bad quake its toast and the only good thing was I was on the second story. After it was over here Sunday and whatever set off the sirens were done and the radar was clear, I thought of my house as rubble. But rubble is rubble whatever the cause and life has taught me that we should never assume that the floor beneath us can't just vanish. Been there, got through it and understand there is more to life than stuff and we should appreciate all the good parts of now for they ARE gifts from Her.