REGINA - Since it was a wet and soggy Victoria Day long weekend, I ended up staying at home rummaging through YouTube feeds.
I ended up killing boredom by spending a lot of my time looking at feeds of meteorologists and storm chasers, covering outbreaks of tornadoes across the United States.
On Sunday, instead of watching Florida blow out Toronto in NHL hockey, I spent the day watching folks like “Ryan Hall Y’all” track tornadic storms in Kansas that could blow out entire communities. One storm chaser posted video near one of these beasts and called it the biggest tornado he had ever seen.
Fortunately, this managed to miss any major populated areas, but I understand small towns ended up getting hit.
On Monday, the attention of storm-chasers turned to a system that bore down on Oklahoma and later made its way into Missouri at night into the suburbs around St. Louis. Keep in mind the St. Louis area got smashed by a tornado around Saturday that killed some people.
This type of thing is not a rare occurrence at this time of year in the United States. I remember a previous Victoria Day where I returned home to see the parents, and tuned in on the computer to a live feed of a big tornado touching down in metro Oklahoma City.
Today, I’m currently here tuning in to live coverage of more tornadoes on YouTube, with the focus shifting to Dixie Alley states such as Tennessee. I tuned in to storm chasers Reed Timmer and his Team Dominator who got caught in a big tornado in Alabama and got spun out onto the side of the road.
Now, as I am writing this today, a potential tornado is bearing down on Huntsville, Alabama. Yikes!
I look at stuff like this and I am going: how can people possibly live like this? I mean, places like Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri normally get these massive tornadoes and tornado warnings. People there are used to getting tornado warnings and have to hide in the basement.
A few weeks ago, I tuned in to Netflix and watched a documentary about the infamous EF-5 Joplin, Missouri tornado of May 22, 2011. That documentary was full of first hand stories of people who got caught up in that situation as the tornado ripped through the town. That place was like a war zone afterwards. It even blew away the high school on the day of their high school graduation ceremony.
This type of stuff freaks me out. When I was a kid, I learned all about tornadoes in school and about how dangerous those could be. After that I would be scared every summer whenever a storm hit.
I will say this for the tornado chasers: they have really done a good job of demystifying tornadoes and letting people know exactly what is happening. So I am personally less scared. That doesn't mean I’m less worried — just less scared.
I guess the main reason I’m writing this is because we are getting closer to our own major “storm” season. Usually I circle the date of June 20 on the calendar because it’s around this same time that the really bad storms start to fire up in this province. The Canadian prairies are always about a month behind the U.S. central plains states for really bad weather.
I remember in particular a really bad storm that hit North Battleford years ago around this time. It was on what was already a very long and contentious city council meeting on the top floor of City Hall. While this was going on, officials were on their cell phones tracking a massive storm that was directly headed for the city.
When the storm hit, the power was knocked out and the roof was almost blown off City Hall, I kid you not. Needless to say, the Mayor adjourned the meeting. I barely managed to get to my car through the downpour.
The next day, we surveyed the damage and it seemed like there were trees uprooted all over North Battleford. One house even had its roof blown off. It was later determined it had been a massive plow wind that plowed over the city.
I also remember another time when a big storm hit Regina and I had to hitch a ride from one of the city officials to get to my car. Needless to say the Albert Street underpass was flooded yet again, and yet again you had the local crazies driving through it and getting stuck in the water. It never fails.
I'm just saying all this to alert all of you Saskatchewan folks as to what might be coming. Storm season is on the way and it is a good idea to be ready with your storm plans.
Such as: to stay weather aware and keep on top of conditions and the news. To find a safe hiding place in your basement in case of a tornado. And of course, to avoid driving through underpasses on Albert Street during these storms.
Besides, history tells us we are not immune to the storm chaos we typically associate with south of the border. I’ve read the stories about the Regina tornado of June 30, 1912 that ripped through the city. I understand even the actor Boris Karloff was in town when that happened.
That is enough of a reminder that “yes, it can happen here.”
