Weather Obsession? Maybe.

Earlier this week I posted about an episode of severe weather we had in the neighborhood. I indicated that my normal location when severe weather rolls in is standing on the front porch. I have always had a interest in extreme weather. A good thunderstorm with lots of lightening will entertain me for the duration. The past 3 years living in Basehor has satisfied that interest with several severe weather days, a couple of blizzards and more snow than I can ever remember in a 2 year stretch.

But even before that, others have noticed my weather interests. SILC and -T always gave me trouble for watching the Weather Channel so much back in the eighty's. I had to explain to them that I was interested in the channel only because they were originally owned by the same company that owned TeleCable, my employer of the time. But I will admit that I also liked to follow the weather radar. That was new and cool.

My interest in weather probably comes from my mother. She was deathly afraid of tornados. Living in Kansas in a home without a basement is a bad thing for someone with that phobia. My mother had my father construct a tornado shelter in the crawlspace of our house.  It was made of four 4"x4" posts with a 3/4 inch plywood roof. I seriously doubt whether it would have provided any significant protection form a tornado. It would more likely ensure that all of us were smashed equally under the weight of a collapsed house.

Yet, during each tornado scare, we would all crawl under the shelter in our damp, dark, musty crawlspace and wait for the portable radio or tornado sirens to inform us it was safe to exit. We had a map of the Kansas City area, complete with concentric circles at peridoic miles from downtown. This allowed us to plot sighted tornados and predict whether we were in their path. We were set up in case a tornado did destroy our house. We had bottles of water and saltine crackers to sustain us until rescuers arrived. We had water putty to plug a broken gas line that we happened to share under the shelter. We had empty Miracle Whip jars to use to relieve ourselves in. We had flashlights and a transistor radio.

I think my mother was this way because of weather events in her life. I seem to remember a story from her childhood when high winds or a tornado struck as they barely escaped into the storm shelter of their house. There was also a nearby F5 tornado catastophe in the Ruskin Heights neighborhood of Kansas City in 1957. Forty people dies in that storm which leveled a 71 mile path from Williamsburg Kansas to Martin City Missouri. I can imagine this left an impression on a young mother with a 1 year old son (me). Her maternal instinct was to protect her family. This was the environment that my interest in weather, specifically severe weather grew.

Ruskin Heights High School gymnasium. 
I don't know how many times my mother told us the story of the tornado that could spell.