Appreciate Severe Weather with a Party

June 1st was the official opening day of the Atlantic Hurricane season.You probably didn't celebrate. I didn't and come to think of it, I didn't see anything in the grocery store sales flyers to make celebrating the season easier - you know, no three packs of hot dogs for 5 bucks or buy-one-get-one-free bags of chips thanks to Hurricane Season Specials. The experts are projecting a 75% chance that the 2007 season will be above average - that translates to 7 to 10 hurricanes instead of the 6 an average year gets hit with. I even blew it on celebrating Hurricane Preparedness Week - that was May 20-26, if you're interested. Have you noticed that people don't seem to celebrate extreme weather. I guess back in the day, people would do a rain dance if they were experiencing a drought, but that's probably about the size of it. Nobody wants to think about the tough stuff, let alone celebrate. I say, celebrate the tough stuff. Take the road less traveled. I live in Westerville, Ohio. - Not a place to really have a great Hurricane Season celebration, - but Tornados are a different story. We get tornados. Just last year, a little bit later along in the summer, I'm driving home and decided to stop, over on Sunbury Road, and grab a pizza. As I pull into the Pizza Shop their delivery guy was getting out of his car with a pizza. I said, "Dude, did somebody prank call an order?" He said, "Nope . Tornado." Between the time that someone called their pizza in, and the driver tried to make the delivery, a tornado had hit the subdivision and the police had already closed the road. Scary. I later found out something like 67 homes were damaged. One thing that bothers me here is that the delivery driver didn't just give the pizza to the police or other emergency workers on the scene, and come on, there had to at least be one hungry person in the subdivision, at least the person that called the order in right? - My guess is that the pizza driver had no tornado delivery training. I tell that story because, well - maybe it's from my guilt resulting from getting a good deal on a pizza from someone else's bad luck - but I think if Tornados were thought about more, paid more attention to, we would all be a little better off. Around here, the emergency sirens blow a test on Wednesdays at high noon and that's about it. So, I propose that we have a Tornado Festival a celebration of sorts - and I'm not talking just funnel cakes. Imagine a festival that celebrates everything Tornado - There could be a beautiful memorial service for the victims of tornados booths from FEMA, Habitat for Humanity, the OSU Marching Band could play Hang on Sloopy - we could host a 10K walk slash run for your life maybe even have a TWISTER Tournament. We welcome your comments - send them to feedback@wosu.org