No Tornadoes Here

I have moved around a bit in my life, but I still live less than an hour's drive from the town where I spent my childhood. This used to bother me, because I thought that it meant I had no spirit of adventure.

I should have moved far away, I told myself. I should be living in Europe, or Asia, or at least in California, instead of staying so close to my roots. How boring, how unimaginative. How safe.

Yes, but safety is not always a bad thing. When I look at news reports of the tornadoes that roared through the South in the last few weeks, and I see the pictures of flattened houses, smashed cars, and mobile homes that were lifted up and deposited miles away, I think maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to stay close to home.

I live in the northeast part of the U.S., a place that doesn't get extreme weather or natural disasters. We don't get tsunamis, earthquakes, or mudslides here. We get some bad thunderstorms, but we're far enough from the ocean that hurricanes have lost their punch by the time they reach us. What we call a tornado would be nothing more than a slight breeze to someone from Alabama or Oklahoma. If the temperature hits 100 degrees two days in a row during the summer the newspapers tell everyone to stay indoors during the "heat wave", but I've been to South Carolina and Florida in July and that's killer heat. As for snowstorms, well, we've had some big ones in recent years, but even the biggest accumulation of snow melts in a week or two, which is better than places where the front lawn disappears under a carpet of snow from October to May.

For anyone who loves extreme weather, yes, this is a boring place to live. You won't ever have to run for your life from a huge wave or a monster tornado. There are no volcanoes waiting to spew hot ash and lava in your backyard while you sleep. Then again, when I look at YouTube videos of some of these events I realize that I'm fine with boring. I'm okay with unimaginative.

Safe is not such a bad thing.  

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