Riders on the storms
I've always had keen interest in tornadoes and other weather phenomena. Growing up in tornado country, there was always a chance that a storm could hit and move parts of my neighborhood into other neighborhoods, or just flatten every house. Thankfully, that never happened, although the roof of a drive-in restaurant a block away ended up in our front yard one spring day back in the 1960s.
I witnessed and heard firsthand stories from survivors of a tornado that ripped through a small central-Illinois town in the mid-1970s. Folks saw the storm coming, huddled in a crawl space beneath their house and found all their walls and roofs gone when they emerged. The pet goldfish was swimming peacefully in its bowl on the kitchen table as if nothing had happened, but a box of canceled checks was found in a field five miles away and a washing machine was pulled from the top of a oak tree about a mile away. Weird stuff happens when tornadoes hit.
Since I’m not one to head to Kansas to chase monster storms and watch them spawn twisters, I turn instead to the Internet to see photos and videos. There's something very exciting about seeing the sun hitting green-black clouds that are churning and gurgling as the storms form. The combination of wind, calm, lightning, clouds, sun, rain, rainbows and eerie stillness combine to create one of nature's most impressive shows.
Some of the best places to see tornadoes and the destruction they leave behind are:
- Tornado Videos - http://www.tornadovideos.net/
- Tornado Live - http://www.tornadolive.com/
- Stormgasm - http://www.stormgasm.com/
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration photo library - http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/nssl/tornado1.html
- Chase Day - http://www.chaseday.com/index.htm
