Pissed Off Wind
That’s what I call it. That wind that moves round and round in circles wiping out everything it touches on the ground. That wind that you can hear before you see most of the time. Everyone I have ever talked to about seeing one describes it the same way, like a freight train. “It sounds like a freight train coming to get me”. When I see trees blowing at a 45-degree angle, I start looking for a hidey-hole.
Hidey-Hole- A place in the ground, usually in the form of a basement or storm cellar, to hide from danger and protect your self.
I first heard this term when I was a small tike from my father during the first bad storm I remember. There was a tornado warning for Smith County in East Texas and we were preparing the bathtub for the occupation of tiny people (My siblings and I). Since then, anywhere I can hide from storms is now graciously referred to as a hidey-hole. While writing this, we are currently in another of the already half a dozen tornado warnings this year for Wichita County (I live Wichita Falls), TX. As we speak, my father and brother are preparing their section of the hidey-hole, which in this particular case is our basement. (Yes, everyone is responsible for their own area of the hidey-hole).
Tornadoes are right up at the top of my fears list. I am terrified of the destruction they can do in a matter of seconds to the world around me. When I moved to Wichita Falls, I just resigned myself to the fact that a tornado would probably kill me. I figured I would move up here and within a week it would be 1979 all over again. For those of you reading that don’t know what I’m talking about, 1979 is when Wichita Falls was laid to waste by the 5th most deadly tornado in Texas history. A mile and a half wide F4 tornado wiped out 3000 homes, hundreds of businesses, damaged a school and a shopping center and claimed the lives of 42 people. This event came to be known nationwide as “Terrible Tuesday”.
To my relief at the time, the jet stream was changing paths just as I was moving up here taking the bad weather with it. That has changed this year and, because of that change, this has been predicted as a record tornado season for this part of the United States. My part of the world is currently living up to the expectation, so my hidey-hole is prepped and ready. I will not be killed by pissed off wind.
Tornadoes are rated on what is called the Fujita Scale. Rating starts at F0 (moderate damage) and goes all the way to F5 (Incredible damage). The scale pictured below is probably a better representation of the Fujita Scale.
A tornado, by definition, is a violently rotating column of air in contact with both the surface of the earth and also in contact with a cumulonimbus cloud. They are literal death spirals. These phenomena form when cold air moves toward the earth at the same time hot air rises and is sent into a spiral by a very strong wind current. If you see a huge dark grey or blackish cumulonimbus cloud moving fast with some equally dark and scary funnel clouds hanging down (they remind me of dementors from Harry Potter) and any of this looks at all circular, you should find a hidey-hole.
From start to finish, from the wind up to the pitch, these things terrify me. If you see weather like I’ve described, and it starts hailing all of a sudden, and the trees start whipping around in different directions, and you get any kind of news alert saying “Tornado Warning”, then you should take cover immediately. If you don’t have a basement or storm cellar, get in a room in the middle of your house with no windows with a bunch of pillows and blankets to soften things up a bit. This way if a tornado does hit your house you can die comfortably. Kidding. Mostly. However, if things do get hairy you don’t want to be bouncing around a hard tile room. Get in the bathtub of your bathroom or a centralized closet so you can put as much between you and the tornado as possible. Debris is the leading cause of death and injury in tornadoes. They throw shit around at a high rate of speed and frequency so being outside is a major no-no.
There are some places that are natural hotspots for tornadoes. If you live in one of these areas and more than one major tornado has happened this year, please get your head checked for tumors in the Prefrontal Cortex (the decision making part of the brain). Maybe you love where you live, but where you live is trying to kill you. Basically the only bright side to the whole thing is a new house every few years and low mortgage rates, but the insurance probably cancels that out so I’m sure it’s a wash. I write that portion with one town in mind specifically; Moore, OK.
WHY do you still LIVE there? There have been 5 major tornadoes in Moore in recent history. One is not yet rated, which is the one that happened just a couple months ago. There have been 2 F4’s (one in 2003, and another in 2010) and 2 F5’s (one in 1999, and another in 2013). If you paid attention in class a few moments ago, that F5 level was the one I listed as “Incredible Damage”. Not just high damage, because the word “high” isn’t enough. The word used is “incredible”.
Incredible-Impossible to believe
The damage these tornadoes do is so intense it is hard to believe it can be possible. Check out the graphic below to see the paths of all the tornadoes in the last 16 years through Moore, OK. As you can see they mostly follow the same basic path. Well all of them except that last little oddball, but someone has to be different… My point is, the fact that people still choose to live there is amazing to me. If I lived there I would take my insurance money and go buy a house far away from there, so as not to be swept away by the pissed off wind. I’m sure Moore has some redeeming qualities, but they better be giving away free money to the people that still live there or those people are getting screwed.
Well there’s my spiel about the pissed off wind, hope you found at least a piece of it enjoyable. I try to write about something important to me every week and this seemed very relevant tonight. I wrote this while listening to a little My Chemical Romance off of their album “The Black Parade”. The song “Teenagers” is as good an anthem as there is for high school students with a little bit of darkness, and the whole album is great if you have some pent up anger to express. Simply plug your phone into your car via AUX cord, select shuffle on the album and turn your cars volume up to a soothing billion and a half decibels and scream your little heads off. Enjoy! 🙂
Until next time my friends, stay safe and away from the pissed off wind! Find a hidey-hole!
-Daniel “THE” Perry
DOUBLE BARREL 