Sunday, October 5, 2014

Weather events



A weather event triggers the events in the second novel in this series. I have seen how weather can dramatically change people’s lives. As you know, I am an amateur radio operator and took the Skywarn training, so I could be an active weather spotter. One summer some years ago I had been trailing a storm looking for any tornado formation. I was told on the radio to turn around and come home since it seemed things were ending. On my way home, I spotted a rotating wall cloud which often means a tornado is forming. I pulled off the road to watch it and called it in on the radio. What seemed like just seconds later a small tornado formed and started right up the highway towards me. I immediately reported it on the radio and looked for an escape route but there was none. It was coming too fast to turnaround, and there was no way to go perpendicular to the tornado’s track. Luck was with me that day! The tornado lifted off the ground and started at a sharp angle away from the road. It did get close enough to actually move the car! If I had not had the Skywarn training, the tornado would have picked me in the car up because I would have driven directly into its path. It is likely that would have triggered life-changing if not life ending events.

The randomness of weather events is a good way to bring chaos into a story line.

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