Looking Forward To A storm Is Not Hoping For Harm

I look forward to storms. I always have. The bigger the better.

I sometimes feel guilty about that.

The national weather service says we're in for a big storm tonight and tomorrow here in central Virginia. They predict it will be 'devastating' - (their language).

What kind of human am I when the prospects of a 'devastating' storm excites me?

I trace it back to my youth.

I experienced two extreme - historic - weather events growing up in rural central Ohio. They shaped forever the way I experience weather. Clearly they shaped who I am.

In 1974, the Xenia tornado roared through. The Xenia tornado would be the deadliest tornado in what remains one of the largest and most violent tornado outbreaks in U.S. History. To this day, the 1974 Super Outbreak is regarded as the most intense tornado outbreak ever; it produced the greatest number of violent tornadoes (F4/F5).

Even though I grew up 40 miles from Xenia, the impacts felt much closer. I remember being huddled in the basement with my mom and sisters as golf ball size hail stones shattered windows and landed on the basement floor as if bullets fired from an automatic weapon.

I remember picking up one of those hail stones in the middle of it all, staring at it in wonder, disbelief - I was awed.

After the storm had passed, we discovered those same hail stones had left hundreds of holes in the aluminum siding on the house. Blasted straight through it like a kid joyfully poking holes in a piece of paper with a pencil.

And then the historic blizzard of 1978. It's widely considered the worst winter storm to ever hit Ohio. The storm caught many off guard as the central pressure in the system dropped at rates rarely seen outside of hurricanes.

We lost power. The house got so cold Pepsi froze in bottles and exploded them. Our house literally became a walk-in freezer.

Our firewood at that time was located too far from the house to get to it in the whiteout conditions (a situation remedied immediately after the storm). I remember my dad putting two couches perpendicular to each end of the fireplace. Then he put blankets over the tops of the two couches to form a tent. And absent firewood, we burnt household furniture in the fireplace to provide warmth.

I remember it still being quite cold inside that tent, but frozen liquids weren't exploding in there.

Eventually, the National Guard dug us out and took us to a neighbor's house a few miles down the road. They somehow still had power. I don't remember how - that seems miraculous looking back. It would be some time before anyone else had it.

I remember riding the school bus when we went back to school some time later. I remember staring out the window at piles of snow taller than the bus lining both sides of the road. I remember climbing snowdrifts up to the roof of the house and sitting up there like the biggest kid on earth.

Both of these storms impacted lives. They were devastating by all measures of devastation. And yet, they left me with a lifelong fascination of storms. For the longest time I swore I'd be a weatherman when I grew up.

Maybe it's because storms, more than anything else I've ever experienced, remind me just how small I am in the grand scheme of things. And in turn, they remind me that there is something much bigger than me out there.

Maybe it's because I love being awed. And nothing awes me more than how violently mother nature can upend the nature of things. How quickly it can do it, and how incapable we are of doing anything about it.

Even when a week or more in advance we know it's coming.

And maybe - (and maybe this is the biggest maybe) - maybe I've come to appreciate how often storms quiet the storms in life. In the aftermath of devastating weather storms, I frequently see people leave behind worldly storms that have pitted them against one another, to embrace one another in rebuilding and healing.

Maybe nothing is more one sided - even if not completely so - than the coming together after a storm.

I don't know, in the end I suppose it's just in my blood. I mean a big part of my life's work and mission is helping people understand just how much our childhoods refuse to leave us. Some experiences insist on tagging along for decades and holding influence over even the latest years of our lives. So I guess there's that.

I just know there's a big storm coming this weekend. It excites me. I know along with it, harm will come to many - and yet - I can't bring myself to wish the storm away.

I wouldn't blame someone who interprets that as me wishing harm upon others. All I can say in my defense is that's not the way it feels.

The good news is - one thing I've come to know about weather - it doesn't much care about my opinion or yours. Either way, it's going to do it's thing.