Debbie Lowdermilk holds photographs Saturday as she reacts while looking at the destroyed school she owns the day after a reported tornado hit Sullivan, Ind.
“TORNADO WARNING.”
This weather alert flashed at me Friday night as a tornado siren screamed throughout my Valparaiso neighborhood. I opened the windows in my house to get a better feel for the outdoor conditions.
Lightning streaked across the sky. The wind shrieked. Mother Nature spit on my face.
I immediately looked toward the heavens, then back to the all-knowing one who provides me comfort in these dangerous situations: Tom Skilling, WGN-TV’s meteorologist. I’d recognize his soothing voice in a typhoon.
Iconic meteorologist Tom Skilling shows St. Mary Catholic Community School students the weather models he created at the WGN studios in Chicago in 2012.
My television screen showed a broad map of the Chicago metro area, including Northwest Indiana, with color-coded graphics of possible tornadic activity heading directly for my house. Or so it seemed.
“Take shelter now in a basement or an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building,” the phone alert stated with a screeching beeeeeeeeeeeep.
My wife did the sensible thing and headed toward our basement with her phone and the dog. I did the stupid thing and went to our back patio to look to the west. Things. Looked. Scary.
I did what I always do when a dangerous storm front heads toward our home. I stacked up the patio furniture so it didn’t blow into the next county. I spent at least six crucial minutes trying to figure out the best placement to secure four metal chairs, a round table, two lawn chairs and two end tables.
This was probably the stupidest six minutes of my life. And, trust me, I’ve had many six-minute periods of my life over the past 60 years that were incredibly stupid. Finally, the furniture configuration I built looked secure enough to withstand winds up 80 mph.
"I did what I always do when a dangerous storm front heads toward our home," Jerry Davich writes. "I stacked up the patio furniture so it didn’t blow into the next county. This was probably the stupidest six minutes of my life."
Of course it didn’t. I’m clearly an idiot who didn’t know what else to do in that situation. A smart man would have joined his wife, dog and sump pump in the basement. Instead, I decided to tour our home to check every door, window and vantage point of the storm.
I ran back upstairs to our bedroom for the latest TV update from Skilling, who always rises to the occasion during such weather crises. Bad news. We lost our satellite signal. I ran downstairs and told my wife “We just lost Tom,” as if a loved one had just died.
I don’t know how to get through a life-threatening storm without the constant reassurance of Tom, or Brant Miller from WMAQ-TV. I felt like a first-time Himalayas mountain climber without a native Sherpa. I returned to our patio to check on the furniture and ponder our possible fate.
None of us have any control of the weather, let alone powerful storms and tornadoes that devastated multiple states across the Midwest last weekend, killing more than 30 people and leaving thousands without a home. “This could be us," I kept thinking.
Bob McCarty of Hammond takes a break Monday from helping a friend clear tree debris in the Forest Hills subdivision in Merrillville.
The National Weather Service confirmed that an EF-1 tornado hit Merrillville on Friday night, along with several other tornadoes in the area. It could have landed anywhere, including my neighborhood or yours. It feels like a deadly Russian roulette game of chance.
In 2008, a more dangerous EF2 tornado ripped through the Griffith home of Jeff and Elaine Jelenski, tearing off the roof, blowing away the garage and leaving the family of four homeless, if not hopeless.
I shadowed their ordeal for a series of columns as their rebuilt their house and their lives. I saw what it takes to replace a house and a home. It took much longer than they expected.
The family’s neighborhood was ground zero for the deafening, darkening twister that day. Within seconds, literally, the couple’s once-tidy house and yard were littered with shattered glass, remnants from every room and a backyard swimming pool that turned into a nasty cesspool.
“I don’t want to die!” one of the boys yelled to his mother that day.
He echoed what many of us fear when a destructive storm or possible tornado blows toward our neighborhood. We feel helpless. Just look at all the victims of the most recent tornadoes in our country. One minute their life is perfectly normal. The next minute, literally, their life is in chaos.
An aerial view of destroyed homes in the aftermath of a tornado Saturday in Little Rock, Arkansas.
“The United States is Earth’s punching bag for nasty weather,” according to a story by The Associated Press.
The nation’s weather chief and other experts say the U.S. gets hit by stronger, costlier, more varied and frequent extreme weather than anywhere on Earth. The reason is geography — two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, mountains, the jet stream and jutting peninsulas — in addition to where, what and how people build, the story says.
In 2022, there were 1,240 tornadoes in the U.S., according to National Weather Service data. In Indiana, the frequency of natural disasters is on the rise, with an increase of 271% over the past 20 years. Obviously, the planet doesn’t care whether we believe in climate change.
Tree-service crews clean up debris Monday in the Forest Hills subdivision in Merrillville.
As winds yowled and lightning flashed outside my home Friday night, I pretended to have a sense of control over a situation I had no control over. Silly humans, huh? We will do anything to convince ourselves that we have a shred of control even when we don’t.
I realized this while peeking through the window at my pathetic attempt to “secure” our patio furniture. It looked like the ideal image to illustrate my realization of our collective futility in regard to Mother Nature’s wrath.
Nonetheless, I’m in awe of our innate ability to respond to the devastation caused by these storms, tornadoes and other destructive weather events. Like a resilient colony of ants rebuilding their destroyed sand hill after a hard rain, we just keep rebuilding our lives. We don’t stop. We don’t quit. We help each other. We move on.
Take that, planet Earth.
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