A tornado, thunderstorms and stormy Virginia days. In February.

Things don't look too bad out on the rivah today, despite the tornado warnings

One thing I don't remember about growing up in Bend, Ore., is experiencing a lot of tornado warnings. Or any tornado warnings for that matter. Like the tornado warnings we're under today here in Kansas. I mean, Gloucester, Va.

February is a month where you should be whining about the bitter cold and the four-foot snow drifts and the sub-zero temperatures and the Arctic blasts and polar vortexes. But it's 70 degrees here and alternately raining sideways and sunny and the tornado warnings are popping up nonstop. Should we really have to be sheltering in place trying to cram 12 people into an interior bathroom that fits only three people somewhat comfortably? I think not.

My first inkling of trouble that was brewing in the weather came late last night when a friend of mine from Oregon, Matt Fields, texted me. He alerted me at 9:38 p.m. that pretty bad storms were headed our way. I think it's pretty cool I have a weather spotter 3,000 miles away.

I was blissfully ignorant of today's potential storms until that text. I then checked into things and saw we were under a "hazardous weather outlook." Then I saw a friend of mine in the Deep South post a family photo on Facebook -- from inside his tornado shelter. Nice.

I told Matt I thought we would be good because we rarely get tornadoes here in Gloucester. We had one in 2011 that killed two people, injured several others and destroyed one of our middle schools. Here's a link to a story I wrote about when the tornado barreled through the nearby community of Deitaville on the upper Middle Peninsula and obliterated a church. Tornado story

The power of wind when it gets to ripping is amazing. During the 2011 EF3 tornado that hit Gloucester with winds up to 165 miles per hour, one man was killed while working in his garage. The tornado lifted his entire house off its foundation and dropped it on his garage where he was working that sat 30 or 40 feet away or so. Incredible.

I want back and read the story I wrote about Deitaville and something said by Pastor John Snow of the church that was destroyed is poignant. I wrote, "He knows he will never forget April 16, 2011. He also knows firsthand how fleeting life can be. `Just the power,' he said. `I look at that and I think, the incredible power. The things we hold onto can be taken away like that."

They certainly can.

Which is why I'm thankful for hope. The hope of eternity that's life in Jesus Christ. In times of storms we have hope that through whatever circumstances we may have to endure, we have hope of eternal life. No storm can take that away.

Go Fourth And Blow

In celebration of Independence Day, all eyes along the Atlantic seaboard are on Hurricane Arthur. It appears at the moment that Arthur is going to stay well offshore, which means things will be fairly normal for the holiday. If you count thunderstorms and horizontal rain as normal. The forecast still calls for plenty of wind and rain on the Fourth, making the prospect for enjoying the holiday less than tantalizing. Grilling some dogs and burgers may be a bit dicey and we're also in the market for rainproof fireworks. Maybe we'll just light them off indoors so the kids don't miss out. Just kidding!

Life out here on the East Coast the past decade is so different from Oregon. I remember out there in Corvallis getting a handle on the weather by looking to the west. If I saw clouds, it's probably going to rain. If I didn't see clouds, it might rain. If I saw a mix of clouds and blue sky, it might rain. Now when I lived in Bend or Prineville on the dry side of the mountains, I still looked to the west. But didn't figure it would rain no matter how many clouds I saw.

Here in Gloucester, though, I never know where the weather will come from. It could be a Nor'Easter, a hurricane or tropical storm sweeping up from the south, or a tornado or derecho bearing down on us from the west. I had never even heard of a derecho until we moved out here. Nor did I pay much mind to hurricane season. That's all changed. We've had storms drop up to 10 inches of rain in one day -- that's a year's worth in Bend and Prineville -- on us and a violent thunderstorm with 2-3 inches of rain in short order isn't unusual. We've had tree limbs go through our bedroom window at midnight in a storm, a tree fall on our neighbor's house in a tornado, a run-of-the-mill thunderstorm send our last grill cartwheeling through the yard and for good measure we've had an earthquake, an EF-3 tornado and thundersnow.

We had one hurricane blow through a few years ago at a time when we had two visitors from Oregon. Two friends also opted to bunk over at our house, for some reason they thought it was safer in a house where people are packed in like a jar of pickles, and so we had somewhere around 19, maybe 20 people in the house. I had them all stay toward the front side of the house away from the trees in the back yard. No one got hurt, everyone was safe and what I remember most is hustling over to our neighbor's house to help him out when a tree went through his roof.

I don't remember that type of stuff in Oregon. Nor do I recall any runs on groceries when bad weather was on the horizon. Out here, the mere mention of a hurricane, or snow, or any related natural disaster  sends people in droves to the store to stock up on water, bread, milk and eggs. It can get a little crazy and I hesitate to take to the kids to the store for those trips. It might get kind of dangerous. I guess it's all part of the adventure. As Ezra used to say, "That's just the way it be's."