Twister

Just heard the news about the devastating tornado close to Oklahoma City. Although, I haven't lived in the USA for a year, merely hearing the word 'tornado' gives me palpitations... This one may have been bigger than the one that hit Joplin, Missouri a couple of years ago.

I had no idea about US weather extremes until I moved there....and I was in for a baptism of fire. Our first night in our US house, I woke up in the wee hours to discover no electricity. Having watched way too many Scream movies, I assumed some sophisticated night prowler had disconnected our power and was lurking outside ready to strike. Not so. A tornado had ripped through a few blocks away and had lifted a house with a young child inside. The house was flattened. The child didn't survive.

I thought this must be a freak event. I didn't live in tornado alley. And according to the movies, tornadoes just rip up cornfields, right? Wrong. Tornado 'watches' were fairly frequent in North Carolina. My children had tornado 'training'. I had to designate a place in the house where we would move in the event of a 'warning'. We were advised to purchase a weather alarm which sounds when a 'watch' is issued.

Now the thing about tornadoes is that they happen due to clashing weather fronts which occur over large tracts of flat land. The USA being so hugely enormous, means that the conditions are often ripe. And even when tornadoes don't develop, wind storms are frequent. I have experienced temperature drops of 10-20 degrees in as many minutes as weather fronts hit each other. It is petrifying. Nowhere is safe.

In 2011, we had what was termed a once-in-a-decade storm in North Carolina. A line of tornadoes made their way up the state. It wasn't a case of 'if' but 'when' and 'what' would be hit. I took the children to the movies hoping that the noise would drown out the sounds of the tornadoes. We saw the Easter movie 'Hop'. But the storm was loud. I could hear it coming over the Dolby Surround Sound and the cinema's sound proofing. There was a bang. The movie went off. We were moved into the auditorium's tunnel and told not to leave.

An off-duty fireman was with us in the tunnel who was receiving messages on his radio. He could track the tornadoes as they were moving and where they were 'touching down'. We knew there was one close. It hit to the side of the cinema twisting the tops of the trees, but we were safe.

I believe that the people in the cinema in Moore, Oklahoma have not been so lucky.