Saved By A Hop, Skip, And A Jump

You have probably seen on the news that the weather has not been good to Central Florida the past few days. The night before the worst of the early morning tornadoes hit and devastated numerous central communities, I heard on the weather that there was a tornado in Crystal River making a beeline for Dunnellon where my mother lives. It was after 11:15 pm so I chose not to call and frighten her and continued to keep up on the weather data. Luckily for the residents of Dunnellon the tornadoes either dissipated or skipped over their small town only to reemerge on the ground and create havoc in other communities. My mom slept through the whole thing! She didn't even know about it until she watched the news the next morning!

At least with this go-round the local and state authorities, as well as FEMA, seem to have their act together. So many of the people hit were retirees who will have a difficult time adjusting to the adversity of their current situation. Also, I don't think that we have the final death toll. There is still much sifting through of houses and many mobile homes to be done. For some reason tornadoes seem to be attracted to mobile home communities. Weather people say that is not true. Maybe it is because there are so many of them? No, I think tornadoes are attracted to them for some reason!

Since my mom is fairly remote, I have asked her to get a weather emergency radio that will wake her up in a weather emergency. She used to keep one at the lake in Minnesota, but has not had one for her place in Dunnellon. Thankfully, that will now change. I can't control the weather, but at least I can reduce my worry-level knowing that she will at least have ample warning if we have any more nasty spring storms. Central Florida is know as the lightning capitol of the world for good reason. Our storms can get pretty ferocious, even though our tornadoes are usually short lived and usually only F-1. This event was obviously an anomaly!

We will continue to have cruddy weather this weekend. This coming week will be cooler, but hopefully the sun will shine and we will get a break from the gloomy clouds. Not that I want to encourage hot weather... I would just prefer cool and sunny! I think the people with no roofs or roof damage and no electrcity would prefer that as well.