IT'S A TWISTER, IT'S A TWISTER!

I have friends scattered all over the country.  One of our frequent topics of conversation is the weather.  In the winter, everyone usually feels sorry for me: "We hear you're having another Nor'Easter!"  In the fall, we usually feel sorry for the many who live along the mid-Atlantic coast in the path of the late-season hurricanes.  In the spring, we usually send our thoughts to the Colorado contingency (and the Canadians, too) because it's still snowing there until the fourth of July.  During the summer, though, our hearts ache for our Midwestern pals.

The weather.  Holy crap, the weather.

For the Midwestern states, it starts in the mid-to-late spring with those first few tornado reports we get to see on the local and regional news stations.  I would imagine there are a heck of a lot more of those "warning" days that our Midwestern pals take as commonplace on the news much like we do here in New England when the meteorologists forecast anything less than a foot of snow.

There is a semi-monster storm front moving across some of the Midwest and Southern states tonight.  It is spawning tornadoes all over the place, so far none deadly like the storms the other night.  Local reports, however, have said that a cow needed to be put down.  Part of me sees the cow from Twister flying by while the woman on her cell phone mutters, "Julia, I gotta go.  We got COWS." 

That would be me.

Look, we have tornadoes here; not often, but we have them.  Rarely do they touch down.  We are more apt to get the weather phenomenon known as a microburst.  As a matter of fact, one passed right along my house, right over the room in which I had taken refuge with my youngest kid when we heard the roaring tell-tale sound approaching.  It took out part of a tree and fence behind the house before tearing a path for several miles and leaving trees, debris, and roofs in its wake.  But we have nothing, nothing like Texas and Oklahoma and Kansas are seeing tonight. 

I live in New England partly by default.  My family has been here since the Mayflower, and I guess we're just stubborn enough fools not to wander too terribly far, as if that damn Plymouth Rock actually exists.  (I know we've all viewed it, but how many huge boulders have you seen just sitting in the middle of a New England beach, put there by its own volition?  The Mayflower beached; it didn't just errantly hit a lone rock like the Titanic hitting an iceberg.  I call bullshit.) 

I live here because I love the beach, Hampton in particular -- the north beach up along the wall -- and I refuse to leave the shore.  I also live here because it's too cold in North Dakota and too hot in Florida.  There are too many earthquakes in California, too great a danger of tsunamis in Alaska, not enough land in Hawaii, not enough water in the Great Lakes, too many scorpions and sidewinders in the Southwest, and too many tornadoes in the Midwest.

In other words, I'm scared shitless to live anywhere else.

Be safe tonight, my friends.  Take cover, heed the sirens, and watch the radar like, well, like I do.  And remember, it's only weather.  (Gawd-frickin' awful weather, but weather, just the same.)

(P.S. Discovered this morning at least one death from the storms.  I may poke fun at the weather, but this isn't funny.  My thoughts and prayers to anyone in the storms' paths.)