Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: tornado

You say TorNAYdo, I say TorNAHdo

First, New York City had to imitate our numerous lakes. They lined metal dumpsters with plastic and filled them with water. Splish Splash! Summer fun! Tough skiing, though.

Now, they have to have our exciting weather. 100 mile an hour winds on Thursday in the Big Apple. Tornado warnings on Staten Island, uprooted trees, power outages. Trash cans flying through the air along with a huge tree limb that raised up over an intersection and began spinning.

“This spinning limb hits one of the cans like it was a bat on a ball,” said a fearless observer. “It was launched way, way over there. It was like a poltergeist.”

WHAT?

Send that man back to storm-chaser school! Out here in Oklahoma, we know the tornado facts, and it has nothing to do with being like a poltergeist, but everything to do with being like a train.

“It sounded like a freight train,” is how the line goes. My personal favorite is the quote from the 1993 Catoosa, OK tornado, from a mechanic. “It sounded like a freight train coming. I jumped into the grease pit.”

I can only hope I have a grease pit for jumping, when our next bout with storms comes around. And around. As for the freight train angle, it’s no contest when weather and machine collide. As you might expect, “It sounds like a freight train.”

Meanwhile, herein lies some training for your next tornadic event:

Stormy Weather

In Oklahoma, springtime is storm season. We have another one on tap today after waking up to sirens and damage at five this morning from what the weathermen are initially calling straight winds. I’m thinking it was a little tornado, based on my visual assessment. (Debris moved in different directions. No damage to the store, and trouble at home was limited to tree branches… others were less fortunate.) Time to grab a book and flashlight and hit the hidey-hole!