Close Calls

A good friend of mine who lives lives in Kentucky e-mailed me today. A tornado touched down in his backyard. There was a lot of tree damage but his house survived in good shape. That's as close as I'd ever want to come to a tornado. Actually, that's closer than I'd care to come.

I'd rather deal with a hurricane. At least there's some warning. There's time to decide if one should bug out or hunker down. Tornadoes give very little warning.

My lovely wife and I had some tornado encounters this past winter in Florida. They weren't backyard close, but close enough for high winds to strip all the leaves out of trees.

Tornadoes are rare here in the mountains of New Hampshire. They aren't completely unheard of, but it can happen. They don't last long and tend to be weaker than those in tornado alley. The worse damage in recent memory involved some lost roof shingles and damage to a garage. The weather service at first denied it was a tornado, but someone had video so they had to admit it was a tornado.

My buddy's e-mail reminded me that live changing events can come out of nowhere. Had the tornado landed just a little bit to one side his house would have been turned to splinters instead of his trees. We can't take the future for granted.

That doesn't mean we don't make plans for the future. We just should not believe those plans are set in stone. Sudden change can literally drop out of the sky.

-Sixbears