Jackson, TN Devastated by tornado...large fire near Nashville

They supposedly had 12 deaths up in Macon County, so it continued the rampage clear on past Nashville. What I always though so peculiar is how the weather has dramatically changed in my lifetime (nearly 34 years) in this city. We used to have winters that dumped a lot of snow with regularity from the ‘70s clear until the late ‘80s, and from the ‘90s onward, have hardly had any at all. Also in that same time period, the threat of tornadoes was rare and only seemed to occur during a brief period of the year, and even at that, supposedly only once every decade did a severe one threaten us (April or May, IIRC — one tornado came down our street shortly after my parents moved in back in ‘74, and I remember when I was in 4th grade a decade later in ‘84 that we had a similar one come by us), but now, these severe weather episodes with threats of tornadoes is a fairly and uncomfortably frequent occurance. Almost as if Oklahoma’s weather moved to Tennessee.

One thing I’ve observed about where we live in Antioch is that we seem to be somewhat insulated from some of the worst of the storms, they always seem to pass to the south or the north, but never quite right through (excluding t-storms). The topography of rolling hills and hollows probably helps to a degree, although some of the subdivisions near me that are at the tops of the hills I would never want to own a home in because those would be toast if a tornado dropped. Most of the places that sustain casualties out in the surrounding counties the topography is either flat or not broken up by hills. Tornadoes love flat land and trailer parks. They love to play on the former and eat the latter.

A co-worker told me his in-law’s parents were killed - a man was literally torn in half by the force of the tornado. I recall as a boy in Southern Illinois watching one approach my neighborhood. My brain kept screaming “flee!” while my body was riveted to the spot by the sheer awesomeness of it. It’s a combination of winds, atmospheric pressure, sonics, nauseating sub-sonics and the visual spectacle itself. Fortunately (inexplicably) it veered off at a right angle about three blocks away. That sort of thing screws up one’s sense of “danger” and “thrilling”.

I was also downtown ten years ago when that one hit there and East Nashville, evacuating the Third National Building as a security guard. A 2x4 penetrated a section of polymer armored glass on the 20th floor - the equivalent of the straw penetrating a barn door.

Don’t fret the weather changes or buy into Big Gay Al’s Global Warming Ride of Doom. This continent, as long as literate people have resided here, has had a consistent history of chaotic weather. Were living in what once was an inland sea in a tropical environment (millions of years of sediment). The Appalachians are far older than the Rockies, the extensive limestone is surprisingly sturdy and that fault across Memphis will only take out Memphis...if it ever does. The weather changes are basically cyclical but not enough information has been gathered over time to better understand it. Gore’s Chicken Little shtick is just that.

That’s just horrible. Fortunately, I have never seen one — at least not remotely close by — I believe I did see one off in the distance near the Oklahoma panhandle, and I didn’t realize I had until I got back the photos and noticed what looked like a possible funnel miles away in the background. The “closest” I ever got to one was in the Spring of ‘74 shortly after my folks moved in and it went down our street, but I was only a fetus, so I never “saw” it. ;-)

In any event, I hope I never do see one in person. The stress of worrying about them coming through is bad enough.

Regarding the bad one that came through downtown, my father was out at his office at Meharry when it passed overhead. Right nearby it killed some kid at a picnic they were having at Centennial Park (you probably remember that). One thing that if I ever lived downtown, I’d never get an apartment in a highrise facing west.

I don’t buy the Gorebaloney, although I do wonder what accounts for that puzzling sudden shift in weather patterns. I always felt sorry for kids that went to school starting in the ‘90s, until that one particular day in the past decade where we had a several-inch deep snowfall, some kids in high school at that point had never had more than a single day off for snow in their entire childhood. I remembered when school was cancelled for a week over it in the early ‘80s. It’s been so strange all these winters with little or no snowfall.

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