TORNADO WATCH
If there’s anything finer or more spirit-renewing than a warm, sun-drenched spring afternoon in Oklahoma, this admittedly parochial native has yet to experience it. Winter’s gray and dreary yoke has finally been thrown off, replaced with a dazzling palette of fresh color and light borne to us on a whispering southern breeze.
On such a day, it seems, the possibilities are limitless. On such a day, under a brilliantly clear azure sky, trouble seems a million miles away.
As most Oklahomans know however, trouble may be forming, unseen, right over our heads.
“A tornado watch has been issued for…”
When we see the tiny little multi-colored state map in the corner of the television screen, get the notification on our phone, or hear that disembodied Steven Hawking-like computer voice on the weather radio, we know the day—however beautiful—just got tarnished with the slightest tinge of anxiety.
There is perhaps no more apt metaphor for the wildly bipolar nature of our state’s weather than the tornado watch. In essence, it tells us that on some of the most achingly beautiful, carefree days of the year, we are routinely expected to be on the lookout for weather that can and will (without the slightest provocation on our part, mind you) rip and tear asunder virtually everything we hold dear, up to and including our very lives.
No wonder some people think living in Oklahoma should come with a warning label.
The official definition goes something along the lines of “a tornado watch means that conditions are favorable in the next few hours for the development of tornadoes within the watch area.”
But anyone who has spent more than a season in Oklahoma knows what that really means is, “Don’t worry, chances are absolutely nothing is going to happen today, unless, of course, it does.”
Zen Buddhism as weather forecast, Oklahoma-style.
Truth is, most Oklahomans are nonchalant about the issuance of a tornado watch because, statistically speaking, they can be. There’s a world of difference between possible and probable, and we know through experience the majority of tornado watches don’t produce tornadoes.
Of course, we’d prefer not to let anyone else in on that secret. Among non-residents of Tornado Alley there has always been and continues to be widespread confusion about the difference between tornado watches and tornado warnings. This gives the unscrupulous pranksters among us a great deal of latitude to impress gullible out-of-state visitors with our alleged icy nerve in the face of seemingly certain doom. Who among us hasn’t been guilty at one time or another of using a tornado watch to lead on a visiting out-of-state relative or friend?
You: (yawning) “Hmmm, looks like they just issued a tornado watch.”
Them: (waves of panic crashing across face) “What? But it’s sunny outside! My God, where’s the basement? Where are the kids? Hurry up! Grab the dog!”
You: “Oh, we don’t have any basements in Oklahoma. We usually just sit outside on the front porch and watch. Might want to chain yourself to the rail, though, this being your first one and all. The wind can get a bit strong…”
In reality, however, there’s an element of whistling past the graveyard in such nonchalance, and only the truly moronic among us completely disregard the tornado watch, even when most of them fizzle into nothing. At the picnic, on the lake, at the game, wherever we are and whatever we’re doing, there’s always that little kernel of information that colors every decision on those certain days the air just feels different somehow, an oppressively palpable texture of frightening possibility.
This peculiar pre-cognizance we experience does of course beg the question of whether Oklahomans, by reason of geography and experience, can just tell when bad weather is imminent.
Scientists will, of course, say no. If the collective brilliance of thousands of our brightest minds and most powerful supercomputers still can’t fully explain and predict the incredibly complex and mysterious dynamics of tornado development, then there’s no compelling reason to believe that John or Jane Doe Sooner can step outside, peer into the sky, and say with any degree of authority that today’s tornado watch is different, more menacing, somehow more real.
And in truth, they’d be right. I for one would rather put my faith in trained meteorologists, Doppler radar, and sophisticated computer models than in Uncle Leroy’s weather-predicting rheumatic joints.
But still, if there’s one thing Oklahomans should be intrinsically tuned in to, it’s the weather. Perhaps over the course of the last century we’ve developed some deeper, subconscious connection to the subtle atmospheric markers that initiate tornado development and the tornado watch is merely the empiric confirmation of that sixth sense.
Or not. Who knows? Just remember to act calm and relaxed when the relatives are here next spring and the season’s first tornado watch is issued. We’ve got a reputation to maintain.