First tornado watch of the year kicked out a couple hours ago. Needless to say, the WeatherGeek (tm) is pumped! Still uncertain of my fascination with tornadoes exactly. Well, I suppose it stems from the fact that Kalamazoo was hammered when on May 13th, 1980 when I was the ripe age of eight. It sounds cliche, but I can honestly recall every detail of that storm as it if were yesterday.
My Dad was totally insistent that we leave to head out to my doctor's appointment and as we walked outside the sky was black as night. I'm talking nasty, jet black ...sort of like the way the clouds loomed ominously over the cities in Independence Day. Scared the shiat out of me. However, we still had to go so off we went heading south leaving the maelstrom behind to commence its thrashing of downtown Kalamazoo. On the way back I glued my ear to the (AM-haha) radio listening to the damage report. In an instant I had a horrific vision of my neighborhood flattened with only shards of 2x4's remaining.
Thankfully the brunt of the tornado roared directly into downtown Kalamazoo and not Portage. As you can tell my memory is still a little vivid from back then, hence the reason I'm worked up enough to babble on this long!
Some relevant links about the storm:
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