Tornado Season

I was out of town when the tornadoes hit, week before last.  Seeing the images on CNN that Thursday morning was heart-breaking.  Calling home, to make sure Atlanta had not been hit.  (I figured CNN would have mentioned that if it had, but just checking.)  Since then, reading about the devasting tornadoes that hit Tuscaloosa and Birmingham and lots of other towns with names that aren't so well known.  Little towns that probably were struggling to keep their downtowns from closing and people moving to bigger towns even before the tornado hit.  Now their downtown is gone and so are a lot of the houses.  Towns where people were born, grew up, got married, and had their children are just gone.

I grew up in Oklahoma and Kansas, and I have strong memories of fear of tornadoes.  Not actual tornadoes - I lived in towns that experienced devastating tornadoes, but they were either before I was born or when I was too young to remember them (and not in the part of town where we lived) - but hearing sirens, and (when we lived in a house with a basement) a few times going to the basement until a particularly strong storm passed.

I went to high school in Woodward, Oklahoma, which had been hit by a devastating tornado in 1947.  Hundreds of homes, damaged or destroyed, and about a hundred people killed in Woodward.  I remember a grave, at Elmwood Cemetery, marked "Unidentified Girl," but there were two unidentified children found in the rubble of the tornado in Woodward, a girl of about 12 and a baby girl.  According to Mike Coppock's compelling accound of the Woodward tornado, there was speculation "that the powerful storm blew them in from Texas, even though the farthest a human body was known to have been carried by a tornado was a mile."

Caroline and I were in Woodward, visiting my mother, in May 2004, when a storm system unleased a series of tornadoes south and east of Woodward.  One of them hit Geary, the town where my parents met as school teachers in the 1930s.  The storms were moving away from us, not toward us, so there wasn't any sense of personal threat - but we kept the television on and watched, mesmerized, as the storm system moved across western Oklahoma.   They knew exactly where the tornadoes were, with great precision, and tracked them from intersection to intersection.  Talking about that evening later, to friends in Atlanta, I said that the local TV stations in Oklahoma cover weather the way the Atlanta stations cover traffic.  Driving back to Oklahoma City to the airport, I remember we saw some storm damage north of Geary - a galvanized metal structure on its size, and broken trees - but it wasn't a really strong tornado and there weren't many people in its path.

The paths of these tornadoes - the ones that just hit Alabama and Georgia and other southeastern states - were long and wide and went through populated areas.  Hundreds of people died, thousands lost their homes.  Lynsley shared the information the other day that there will be a truck at Morningside Presbyterian Church on Wednesday to collect relief supplies.  We bought peanut butter and a big corregated box of diapers at Target yesterday and will be doing some more shopping before Wednesday.  So check the list of what they need and make a trip to your favorite store so you can give a little something to some people who have lost everything.  And if you can't make it this week, they will be there every Wednesday through the end of the month.

After the Ice

Atlanta doesn't do well with winter weather. This is the south, so it's not supposed to snow, even though it does, sometimes. Ice is more of a problem than snow, and what happened this week - in addition to the sleet and freezing rain - is that nighttime temperatures have been very cold so anything that managed to melt but stayed on the roadways and sidewalks turned to ice overnight.

I was out of town when all this started on Sunday. Expecting my flight back Tuesday to be cancelled. Checking Delta.com frequently on Monday, but my flight was listed as "on time" so I was hoping for the best. If I did make it back to the Atlanta airport could I get home? Wondering about taking MARTA, or being stuck in an airport hotel. Hoping for the best.

A new inscrutable rule that you can't use your cellphone til after you clear passport control. I tried, walking up the jetway, but got caught and had to hit the "disconnect" button. (I started to say "hang up," and wondered if children now wonder why anyone would refer to ending a telephone call as "hanging up." But I digress.) Tom hadn't answered but called me as I was making my way towards passport control. I'm here, I said, but can't talk. Can't use cell phones til after passport control. Already got caught once. Call you back as soon as I can.

I asked the officer at passport control if I was going to be able to get home. He looked at the address on my customs declaration and said "probably." He said it had taken him 3 hours to get in that morning from Acworth. Good luck going home, I told him. He shook his head and said he wasn't sure he was going home.

Once I was out of the cell-free zone, I called Tom. He thought if I could get out of the parking lot I probably could make it. The guy at park and ride said they would make sure I could get out. It had been just a little above freezing for at least some of the day, so when I got to my car, some of the snow and ice had turned to slush. The park and ride guy helped me get the ice off my car (there wasn't much), and I headed out at about 4:30.

The drive wasn't fun (and some of it was terrifying) but I did make it. Fortunately there were not many cars on the road. Lots of ice and snow left on the interstate, especially on bridges, and Wessyngton Road was barely passable. But I made it. I parked my car and didn't drive again til yesterday.

Kids out of school all week. Caroline and Sarah were supposed to be having their end-of-semester exams, but those have been rescheduled for next week. Watching the dog slide on the ice in the backyard. Keeping the birdfeeders filled, and putting the suet that the squirrels had attacked on the diningroom window with a piece of packing tape, and seeing an array of birds I'd never seen up close, pecking at the suet, knocking the metal cage into the window and making a racket.

Of course, the week of the January 2011 ice event was also the week we learned the name of a third term congresswoman from Tucson, Arizona. On Saturday, the first news alert was that she'd been shot, then that she was dead, then that she was alive. Watching CNN in the airport lounge before departure Saturday night, CNN International in my hotel room, and back to CNN once I was home. On Wednesday night, we watched the President's speech, and on Thursday, we watched the pundits talk about the President's speech.

It was one of those moments when you think, is this the inflection point, is this the time that people stop shouting and start talking, that short term strategy gives way to something more constructive?  Is it a time when we actually have a chance to take action in the long term best interest of our country? I remember wondering the same thing about September 11. The feeling didn't last long, but we did get wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By Friday, the roads were a little clearer, and I went to the office. The House Republicans were in Baltimore, and the news cycle had move on to events in Tunisia (a chance for Americans to learn a little geography). Floods in Australia. Is anything going to be any different, this time?

It's Saturday morning. In a little while, Iain and I will walk the dog and see if Alon's is open. Hoping for something better, as life resumes.