Blogathon has begun somewhat ominously, with dark clouds, heavy rain, and rolling thunder. It’s not the craziest weather I’ve seen – just a typical Midwestern thunderstorm.
But that got me thinking on how different someone’s idea of “typical” weather can be. If lightning is striking down the block, we’re usually looking out the window instead of running for cover. Power cutting out doesn’t even make us bat an eye anymore. Of course, the last time the power cut out here was while I was watching Inception at our local movie theater, and no one was quite sure if that was supposed to happen or not. That’s how much that movie blew our minds.
The same thing goes for tornadoes.
“Tornado Watch” to a normal person: Take cover, tornadoes may be forming!
“Tornado Watch” to a Midwesterner: OMGCOOL tornadoes may be forming, go plaster yourself to a window to watch for them!
and
“Tornado Warning” to a normal person: Holy shit a tornado! Get in the basement!
“Tornado Warning” to a Midwesterner: Holy shit a tornado! Appreciate that green sky until that thing seems to be ripping off rooftops, then reluctantly march down to the basement.
I didn’t realize how crazy we might sound until I came to college, where I was exposed to people who hadn’t lived in the Midwest their whole lives. You’ve lived through hurricanes? That 4.0 magnitude earthquake that titillated us Hoosiers didn’t even wake you up?! You’re crazy. Excuse me while I go watch energy shoot out of the sky and wind funnels of pure destruction.
The best reaction to our tornado culture had to be from my friend from London. A couple days after he first moved to Purdue, we had our monthly tornado siren check go off. If you’re from the area, you’ll know this as the annoying sound that wakes you up on the first Saturday morning of every month (seriously, Saturday morning? How cruel). We’re so used to the sound that it’s totally ineffective – usually when it goes off we all just sit around discussing it. Hey, is that the tornado siren? Is that for real this time? Does that mean warning or watch? Someone look up the info on their iPhone instead of us immediately taking cover.
His reaction?
“I thought the Germans were coming!”
Priceless.
What natural disasters are you used to? Which ones really freak you out?
This is post 1 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.
It’s good to know I’m not the only Midwesterner who sees nothing abnormal about watching thunderstorms rather than taking cover. My boyfriend and I sat out on the deck railing and watched the lighting right over my house for an hour recently -it was purple! Going inside just wasn’t an option!Good start to Blogathon. I’ll be lurking and commenting occasionally. :)
People around here sometimes talk about black ice or people either being used to snow or not.
Don’t really get any regular natural disasters where I live (southern Ontario).Every once in a while someone within a 400 km radius of me gets a tornado, and we get some freezing rain sometimes…We had a very minor earthquake a few weeks ago that most people didn’t notice!Yeah, I got nothing >_>
I just moved to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands about 4 months ago. I know… pity me. But right now is hurricane season, and I’m certain I’m going to have to live through at least one this year. Having never experienced a true hurricane before (I’m originally from MD), gotta say I’m more than a little nervous about it.However, I’m quite happy that I’ve never had to deal with a tornado. The closest I’ve ever gotten to a tornado is the move Twister and I’d like to keep it that way.Blog away!! I’m looking forward to the upcoming posts – I’ve started reading your stuff since a little after BQ and I’ve enjoyed it all so far :-)
Hurricanes. What tornadoes are to people in the Midwest, hurricanes are to people who grow up in the Gulf South. (We get tornadoes too, just not as many.) When I lived in California, my friends there would freak when we talked casually about riding out a Cat 2, or partying during a tropical storm, but that’s just the way it is. Evacuating isn’t practical for most people unless it’s a monster storm.
I noticed it. At first I thought it was my friend messing around with my chair, but I did get a bit freaked when I realized the whole building was shaking.When I was a kid there was a tornado that struck London, ON. It landed behind a school and tore up some portables and sent pieces flying towards our car. Very scary.
Our old house had a front porch that spanned the entire length of the front of the house and had a roof over it…so whenever a storm would start we’d ACTUALLY GO OUTSIDE AND WATCH.On the other hand, my sister’s friend’ s mom regularly flips her shit and hides in the basement when the slightest thing happens.
Flash floods, at this point I’m immune to all forms of rising water and have no fear if my house were to suddenly sink. It’s just not an issue after seeing it happen every year as I was growing up.
Recently, Chicago’s been getting a lot of floods. I’m starting to get used to that. It also helps that I don’t live in a basement or ground floor.
Jen, I grew up in Montana, so I appreciated blizzards in winter, massive thunderstorms in springtime, and blistering heat in summer. Then I’ve lived in Tucson (sandstorms and lightning) Kansas (more tornadoes) Kentucky (occasional tornado, and frequent ice storms), and I currently reside in Georgia (mind-numbing heat and humidity). But I lived in central California for 10 years – never could get used to earthquakes… especially the big ones like Loma Prieta (October 1989 – I was 8km from the epicenter).
The Germans are coming. That’s awesome, haha.I went back home (to Indiana) this summer and had almost forgotten what a real tornado warning was like.I got alarmed (no pun intended) for a bit but then realized that growing up I’d lived through several and that for the most part they’re harmless as long as you take cover when necessary.
I seem to have the weird luck of moving to disaster-prone zones without ever experiencing said disaster. Not a single earthquake while living on the West coast for about 5 years, and the closest I came to a tornado here in ND was seeing that wicked shade of green in the sky before deciding this would be a good time to get into my car and take a 15 minute drive home from the mall. No blizzards yet either.I think I’d have to live thru one of these disasters before becoming afraid of them; I generally seem to be fear-deficient to the point of rank stupidity.
actually, I remember now one situation that freaked me out: hiking in the mountains when a thunderstorm is nearing. Being struck by lightning isn’t even remotely appealing.
Here in Ireland we’re used to rain, but we talk about it as if it’s a natural disaster.
I’m from northern New York, so we’re very nonchalant about snow. “Snow” day? No such thing. It takes an ice storm to close school in the north country.This nonchalance is not always a good thing, because on the semi-rare occasion that there IS a bad enough snow to make the roads horribly unsafe despite the plows’ best efforts, certain people (like the admins at the college where I teach) are often loathe to close the campus.
My husband’s tiny hometown in Iowa uses the tornado siren as an alarm clock. It goes off at 7AM, noon, and 6PM. The first time we stayed there and I heard it, I nearly fell out of bed! Though that was more because the area had been hit by a severe tornado the same weekend the year before, so I was a tad paranoid.Last weekend some severe storms rolled through here (far north Chicago suburbs) and the tornado sirens went off. My husband and I got out of bed long enough to turn on the weather, decide the worst was already past, and go back to bed. Tornadoes are so – passe.Also, I remember having tornado drills in school every couple of months or so. We’d all troop down to the basement girls’ locker room, which made the boys snicker, and assume “the position”. It does tend to make one rather phlegmatic about the whole thing – desensitization in action!
In the pacific northwest, our biggest fear is a Lahar.That’s not a very commonly known natural disaster, so for the uninitiated, a Lahar is like a giant volcano mudslide. See, the fact that we live under a volcano is no issue. In my entire life there has never been serious talk of a volcanic eruption. However, every few years, there’s a big scare that towns which are miles upon miles away from the mountain itself will be covered in 10-30ft of mud.
I have spent a goodly portion of my life in the path of hurricanes. I was in North Carolina for a rather hectic few years of hurricanes, and then I moved to northern Florida just in time for 4-5 good-sized ones to hit us in one season. In NC I was in the Marine Corps, and we were confined to the barracks during disastrous weather, so we had hurricane parties, where we would buy as much ice as we could find, stock up on beer, liquor, charcoal and meat, and then get crazy drunk and cook everything on our little portable grills. In FL it was just a lot of praying that the power would come back on someday.
I definitely have watched lightning on my porch with my parents before. Without a roof over it.
Natural disasters? I live in friggin’ Denmark! The nearest we get to natural disasters is a week of solid sun, or more likely a month of rain.
Living in Arizona after growing up in Connecticut (where, if it doesn’t rain at least once in a week OMG ITS A DROUGHT), people think monsoon season is… impressive. And yes, the storms are lovely. In the desert, the heavy rain that reminds me of home is something special, and so I, of course, go out in the pouring rain and wind and jump in puddles and spin around. Meanwhile, everyone around me is convinced I’m going to catch a cold *eyeroll* and begin to freak out about how ANY plans for driving ANYWHERE are out of the question as soon as one tiny little raindrop hits the pavement. Seriously? I’ve driven in rain where you can’t see more than 10 feet ahead of you. Your little “monsoon season” doesn’t scare me.
We get the occasional tornado here in Kentucky, but thats about it. Flash floods and ice storms are much more of a danger.When I was a kid, though, my family was friends with a family of refugees from the former Yugoslav republics. My mother was visiting them one day, and the tornado siren went off while she was talking to the mother of the family. A look of intense fear went across her face before my mom could explain that it was just a storm siren. She immediately relaxed and said that it would have meant bombs back in Europe, but here, only tornadoes!
being from Oklahoma tornadoes happen often in the spring,and all year we get heavy wind storms,gale force often,the wind storms seem to me more destructive then the tornadoes though.but that’s just my perception.
I have noticed that as a native Washingtonian, I’m calmer about earthquakes then most people.What I think is really funny is that we are having a pretty cool summer. Most of the days in July have started off grey and cold and then sometime around lunchtime the clouds disappear and it’s sunny and hot the rest of the day. To me, this seems perfectly normal, but a lot of people who haven’t lived her for 20+ years thinks it’s totally insane.
hah! i’ve lived in southern Louisiana my whole life…not so far South that we have to evacuate when there’s a hurricane, but still far enough South to really take a pounding. “hurricane parties” are commonplace, where groups of friends and /or family will all bring along supplies (ok, beer) and hunker down at one person’s home to ride out the storm together.tornadoes don’t happen much here. in fact…you’ll appreciate this. in 2000, my family went to Omaha to watch LSU play in the College World Series. one night was very stormy, and as we were huddled up in our room, we heard the tornado sirens start going off. i’m guessing that everyone else in the hotel must have been native to the Midwest, because there we were, the only people in the whole hotel to run out into the hallway in our pajamas carrying pillows and completely freaking out. eventually an employee found us and very nonchalantly told us not to worry, we could go back to our rooms. meanwhile, i’m thinking “are you INSANE?! there’s a siren going off and we’re all going to die!!”good times.
I saw a pretty funny ‘weather’ moment recently: the ‘Severe Thunderstorm Warning’ that occurred when Arc Attack first appeared on America’s Got Talent.
Lightning outside + Geeky Star Wars Tesla Coil Music inside = Perfect evening.
Fellow Midwesterner here (born and raised in Kansas), and I’ve seen it a bit differently. Tornado warning = hey! let’s go run out on the back porch and see if we can see the funnel!
HAHAHAA. Oh dear. I’m glad I was already on the floor when I read that last line.
AGH!! When I was at Purdue, I HATED that freaking siren… Saturday? Seriously? The only worse thing was when I was in the dorms on a football home day… the band marched by Saturday morning too, and far earlier than the tornado siren.
As a Kansan, tornado warnings concern me almost as much as heat advisories.
This reminds me of when I was talking to my Michigan friend and how I, as an Arizona resident, had a small case of heat stroke. Her response? “A… small case? ^_^;;”
As i read the post, i thought “Oh, no, we don’t have tornados or hurricanes here, just an ‘Orkan’ every now and then.” Looking for the english word for ‘Orkan’, i realised thats the north sea version of a hurricane… So, yes, I know exactly what you are talking about :)It’s quite funny to see some inlander react to a mere storm or a little rain, something most peaople here don’t really notice. Don’t park your car under a tree, thats it. Oh, and don’t try to use an umbrella in a hurricane, even more funny to see those attempts :DBut the sirens don’t start for hurricanes here, they dosn’t get that bad. High tides are a greater hazard, but i an’t remember hearing sirens for them, too.What i remember are the sirens from my youth (80s), so my reaction is much like the one of your friend. But replace ‘germans’ with ‘soviets’, as i live in germany. Even back then they won’t have done any good, as they were tested again and again. No one would have reacted just because of a siren.