| DON YOCHAM
Sew the Wind
On April 26, 1984, a half-mile-wide tornado swept through tiny Morris, Oklahoma.
The sirens gave us a little warning.
I remember patiently shuffling my grandmother off the back porch and down to the basement with all the calm I could muster. Meanwhile, the sound of a thousand freight trains rising just out of sight behind the woods to the east injected urgency to our combined pace.
The tornado passed directly over our house within minutes, thankfully still high enough in the atmosphere to spare us any damage.
An incredible roar rose overhead – a stark contrast to the electric calm of the evening just a few minutes earlier.
Within seconds, stillness returned.
Seven miles away, however, destruction followed.
That same tornado made a beeline across the pastures and wheat fields separating our house from my hometown before ultimately touching down and leveling 80% of Morris in the process.
Extensive physical damage marred the city, though the human toll was not nearly as bad as you might expect. Fair warning coupled with most Okies knowing what to do when a tornado comes knocking saved many lives.
Tragic consequences aside, the whole affair left me in awe of just how far nature will go to find equilibrium. After all, a tornado is one of nature’s many ways of resolving opposing forces. In this case, warm, moist air up against a cold front.
The bigger the imbalance, the more rapid and turbulent the resolution.
And when you consider the geopolitical and economic imbalances created to extend the American lifestyle a few more years, I expect we may all wake up one morning awestruck by how quickly and turbulently equilibrium gets restored. | | | | |
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