So The Planet Ann Arbor had a tornado a few nights ago. Do we get a lot of tornados here? Not really. But we do get them.

Next Door Neighbor was LIT UP the next day. People were remembering tornado drills where they had to hunker down under their little elementary school desks. This was also a common practice to prepare for nuclear bombs. People my age who grew up here were taught that due to our hilly topography (glacial moraine), tornadoes kind of skipped over our city or dissipated (or whatever). A lot of those kids grew up not fearing tornadoes for that reason. I think the truth is somewhere in between. I think our topology is not particularly favorable for tornado formation. I also think tornadoes can happen just about anywhere depending upon any number of variables.

At my elementary school in the yooperland, we didn’t go through those under the desk drills. The yooperland almost NEVER has tornadoes and I was too young to experience air raid drills. The scariest bit of my elementary school years involved the Bay of Pigs. My parents told me that it looked like we (the USA) would be going to war. That was about all they said about that and I totally didn’t understand what was going on. I remember walking across the street to Stinkin’ Linkin’ school on a cold winter day under a watery sun. I looked up at that sun fearful that we were all gonna die. I was maybe five.

Of course we didn’t die. Because here I am with a home on the Planet Ann Arbor and a seasonal cabin on the moominbeach and two beautiful daughters plus a bonus daughter. And a billion beloved cousins.

Photo credit to mouse.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 17th, 2026 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.