Oh fun! The Tornado Experience!

[Antisocial_Worker]

I live in an area of the country with fairly sedate weather. The topography is too up-and-down to let a tornado do much for long, although my mother was there when one touched down at the zoo and wreaked some havoc back in the 70's. When the power went out, they herded all the zoo patrons into the nearest building for shelter, and when the power came back on, my mother and the others in her group discovered they'd been herded into the snake house.

Anyway... We do get our share of violent thunderstorms, even without tornadoes. Severe thunderstorm warnings are almost a daily occurrence during the summer. When I worked in Motel Hell, you could always tell when the tourists were from a calm-weather place because they would huddle around the lobby TV in a worried clot, fretting and asking if they were safe there.

And most people were sympathetic when the building itself was struck by lightning, which knocked out the cable...

They were also mostly sympathetic, come to think of it, when the dying remnants of two hurricanes stalled out over the region and flooded us. Water was shooting up through the floor in a trail of little fountains going down the first-floor hallway.

There was someone killed by lightning up in Rio Rancho on the 4th this year. another seven were put in the hospital.

A gaggle of tourists at the Biltmore Estate were hospitalized here a few years ago when lightning struck the tree they'd taken shelter under.