Sometimes an F5 tornado will grind the bark off of trees. The cyclone, nature's sandblaster, is full of metal scrap, glass, broken, tile and cement, it turns entire buildings to dust, scrapes the ground down to clay, strips asphalt, lifts & flings sidewalks. Everything pulverized into further grist to grind the earth.
To see a cyclone in the big midwest sky is to look on the angry face of God.
And I often think: Like a cosmic horror, perhaps they make Americans a little crazy.
@futurebird I grew up in Oklahoma and had this recurring dream as a kid of this tornado that just went back and forth from one end of the state to the other, like a typewriter across the state, eventually covering every square inch. Definitely part of my psyche, lol
I'm being silly, but I do think there is something... haunting about the attempt to graft European agrarian life onto this much bigger landscape that is only superficially similar. The cities, and culture of Native Americans is much older and better adapted to the land and natural environments (and indeed they shaped these environments)
Just plopping down a little English farm village in a place with such a big sky may not end well. Even if it's "temperate" and has similar rainfall.
@futurebird To this I would only add: European agrarian life was already in a kind of crisis (intimately linked to colonization) – the Inclosure Acts, the Holznot, etc. This was not just a thing out of place but a broken thing out of place.
@futurebird@sarahtaber agrees with you, she has tooted about this issue. Native American agriculture is more productive than European. In the plains the buffalo active shape the ground for the better.
@futurebird
I'd like to know if similar issues occur in other areas with strong tornado producing conditions, such as the Pampas of Argentina, the vast steppes of central Asia, and so forth.
@futurebird it a common joke here that when you hear the tornado sirens, you grab some alcohol (in my case wine), go outside, and watch the storm. Tornadoes (and a healthy respect of them) has been a party of my entire life. We're definitely a crazy bunch
Japanese are kind of crazy for the tsunamis, severe hurricanes, monsoons, volcanic shit, and frequent landslides. It's the most disaster prone area on earth. Which also has the oldest wooden buildings. Go figure.
But Japan has had centuries to develop mythology and meaning for those disasters. Isn't there a giant catfish that makes earthquakes?
And then those creatures live on in modern media as Kaiju.
Because of the cultural erasure in the US there isn't a coherent mythology for our natural monsters. There would have been one but it's been lost and poorly translated, not preserved enough or respected. Does that make any sense?
Americans love to say something is "based on an old Native American Story" but often this is nothing but nonsense. Or it's so far from the story that that saying there is a connection is insulting.
Building culture and mythology takes time. It can't be rushed along. The stories will come, they will grow, and help us to make sense of the violence of nature.
But, and this is my spicy theory: people are vulnerable when they don't have stories.
@futurebird@noricenolife so you think that if we had a more coherent mythology that explained tornadoes as a windbeast or angry bee god, people would be subtly more mentally balanced because... we would think of natural disasters as more like an inherent part of this world? or did I misunderstand?
It wouldn't be as easy for all those strange "end of the world" churches to take people on. The world is uncanny and scary and at least this prosperity gospel preachers is TALKING about it. Not just calling it "weather"
@futurebird@noricenolife I like the idea of inventing new gods and monsters to personify the mysteries of natural forces, but that approach might be too animist for the US.
Maybe the cryptic deep lore of @WEATHERISHAPPENING with the mysterious weather lords and angry sky blobs is part of a bridge between the current state of understanding the tornadoes and the more serene status quo you are imagining.
Appalachian folklore has all this shit worked out already. Because mountains. Mountains do weird things to human culture that other terrain doesn't. Rapid changes occur in language, religion, culture, etc... because the brakes your neighbors normally put on your progress can't reach you if they can't get to you for 9 months of the year. It creates regionalization. Prior to the internet, Appalachian cultures were different from holler to holler.
But in the Blue Ridge Mountains area, you have to think about Uktena, Usdi Awi, and Gollywhumpers. And if you heard birds at night, you're in danger.
Course, that's true in the west too. The mythology says its witches or monsters. Science says its cougars.
I've seen a tornado twice... and do not want to see one again. It's the kind of thing that can change you. Kind of like the Grand Canyon but it wants to eat you.
It doesn't want to eat you. That implies agency. It doesn't "want" anything. Besides, it's not the wind that will rip you apart, it's all the crap it picked up. I'd compare it more to a flash flood in that regard.
@futurebird@noricenolife
As a colonist growing up in a bland suburb (on unseeded Wurundjeri land) at some point I realised that white Australia doesn't have those deep stories. A few tales about bush rangers and miners but only about events, not about place. The lack of connection drives people to communities with a deeper narrative to tell but it's often got a political agenda and doesn't relate to the land we are on but points back to a 'motherland'.
I've heard tall tales spun on doorstoops and front porches, seen old Gods brought to new lands, watched mythos rise and fall in rapid, spinning succession.
Humanity is always growing and being unoquivically itself. Folk lore and folk religion will always sprout, like weeds through the concrete, given enough time and love.
People certainly FEEL more vulnerable when they don’t have stories. And when people feel vulnerable, it’s harder for them to work collectively, which makes them more vulnerable.
When I have looked at those storms I have believed in an apocalypse. It's the perfect imagery for a sermon on the rapture. It is beautiful and terrible. And we simply live with these monsters.
It was quite startling to realize that most of the rest of the world doesn't just have these immense, rapid-developing killer storms rambling across our primary farmland on the regular.
I mean the west Pacific gets the super typhoons reasonably often which are even more terrifying but they're a bit more predictable.
My mother lived through this tornado, and there stories from it are wild. Hay straws half-way impaled through glass windows, without breaking the glass.
A neighbor of theirs pulled her kids and their dog onto a bed. there was a blanket between the mattress and box springs. the tornado hit their house and they landed hundreds of feet away on the mattress and box springs together. But the blanket between them was gone.
Every now and then you find a photo of someone just beaming ear to ear hugging their family standing in the wreckage of their home and those photos really get to me- because you know that to not really see the property damage things got very dark and dangerous and living is enough for the moment.
@futurebird@MichaelTBacon
My buddy in high school and his family went out to dinner to celebrate his scholarship to Stanford. When they got home, his house was gone.
I told him he was like a nerdy superhero...he saved his family with his brainpower 😂
@MichaelTBacon@futurebird My uncle slept through a strong tornado while on a business trip. When he woke up, the buildings on the other side of the street were all wrecked. There aren’t many other natural disasters that can compare. Earthquakes, maybe, but tornadoes are so strange in their precision.
@dx@MichaelTBacon@futurebird my dad didn’t notice the tornado that went through Dallas less than a mile away from him while he was out walking the dog. In fairness he has since gotten hearing aids