#tornado

For a number of reasons, you’ll find more than a few weather and storm-related accounts populating my Twitter feed. The power and beauty of Mother Nature, if that’s a correct term in this day and age, amazes and frightens us all, and such accounts provide just the sort of non-political diversion one needs to stay sane in 2018. To remind us of our inconsequential status in the Grand Scheme of Things. Violent storms, blizzards, and gorgeous sunsets know no partisan hackery.

Last night, a perfectly creepy photo of an ominous, rotating wall cloud popped up in my feed, dark against the fading daylight, menacing. You could imagine the gathering winds buffeting that dirt road and surrounding fields, rippling the plants like storm-tossed waves. Through this image, just like with so many others, you could sense the photographer’s excitement and apprehension as the cloud threatens to spawn the most terrifying of weather phenomenon: a tornado.

Naturally, I complimented the photographer on his great photo of a Toyota Camry.

For decades, conventional wisdom has said that a car is the worst place to be caught during a tornado, besides maybe a mobile home. Hundreds of photos of demolished vehicles thrown about by violent twisters seem to provide ample support for that conclusion. Driving instructors, safety advocates, and meteorologists have all argued that a ditch or culvert provides better protection than an easily-overturned car. Over the last decade or so, however, a debate has been brewing between weather and safety experts about the soundness of this advice.

Mother Nature appears to have issues with the auto industry. First, a once in a millennium tsunami crippled Japanese automakers and suppliers for most of the year. Now, the most powerful long-track tornado in US history hit automakers in Alabama.