top o' the mornin'® 4/3/2014

[earendel]

40 years ago today a cluster of tornadoes hit the Kentuckiana area; this morning there were thunderstorms in the area, making folks who remember that day a little nervous. I wasn't living here at the time and so, a couple years later when there was severe weather and tornado warnings, I didn't understand why everyone was so worked up. Growing up in Oklahoma I was used to such things; my senior year in high school a tornado hit our part of town and damaged a lot of the area around my school. We were out for four days, during which time I engaged in a marathon multi-board game of RISK at a friend's house.

[SpacemanSpiff]

I remember that event well. I was in Huntsville for an orchestra practice, and a few minutes before we were to start, I tried to open a door to go outside -- one of those metal double-doors that you have to press a bar to open. Except it didn't open at first. Then the power went out, and I was riding the door like a sled for about 10 yards into the dark.

(I always joked that it was the day I quit smoking, which was what I was going outside to do. I didn't afterwards.)

Turned out a tornado had passed over the building and blew out much of the doors and windows. Needless to say, practice was cancelled, and mom drove us back home, sixty miles with us both staring out the windows just in case another twister popped up.

AL.com has a story on it in today's edition:

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2014/04/wha ... river_news

The thing that I always remembered, after the fact, was the peach orchard along US 72 near Athens. It had about a mile of frontage on the road, and went as far as the eye could see. After the storm, you could see a swath of the trees missing, snapped off at ground level as if six bulldozers drove side-by-side diagonally from the road.