Twisters

By Chris.

St Paul is green. Green as Phoenix is sandy. We knew this before arriving and couldn’t wait to see the beautiful fall colors. Having lived in England for most of our lives we were also aware that it wasn’t green because it was near a river. Nope, it was because it rained. A lot.
We also knew from many conversations with snug snow birds (they are people who live in Minnesota when Arizona is hot and live in Arizona when Minnesota is cold) that it got very, very, very cold. Bone chilling, nose freezing, nipple shrinkingly cold.
Then you add the wind chill factor and you blood freezes if you stay outside for more than 2½ seconds.
So we came prepared. Back in May I went to Dillard’s in Phoenix when they sell off all the winter clothing. I bought three woolly sweaters and a jacket for less than a hundred bucks, a saving of over three hundred dollars (that’s if you believe the ticketed value). Jo and the girls got given plenty of clothes from Minnesotan refugees who were hiding in Arizona from fear of being killed by the winter.
We were prepared. Or so we thought.
Since we’ve been here the weather has generally surprised us. The first two weeks it got so hot that we were forced to buy an air conditioner because the girls were scratching their skin off from the heat rash (hives). Then in the last two weeks we had torrential rain out of the blue (literally), twice. I got soaked walking home from class because I didn’t have a jacket, twice.
This is not the end of the world, however. We lived in Sheffield for a number of years. There in the fall you leave your house to go to a friends walking along the street without a sign of any rain. When you end up at your destination you are completely wet. The place is that damp.
Rain we can do. Just take a jacket with you wherever you go and expect to get soggy.
There have been a fair few thunderstorms as well. We have those in England and some pretty spectacular ones in Phoenix. Thunderstorms we have experienced.

However there is one type of weather no-one told us about. Thursday night I finished class at six pm. It was raining really hard, the type of rain that is so loud you can’t hear the person shouting next to you. Surprisingly I didn’t have my jacket.
I had to cross the courtyard to get to the cafeteria for dinner and was just about to make a dash for it when a lady standing by the door said -
‘The sirens are on.’
‘The sirens, what sirens?’ I said.
‘The tornado sirens.’ she said calmly.
‘’The tornado sirens?’ I said. ‘What tornado sirens?’

Apparently we have tornados. Not just snow, ice and temperatures of minus forty. Not just torrential rain and thunderstorms. We have tornados.
And hail stones the size of golf balls for that matter.

I looked it up on the web the other day:
Minneapolis is rated 8th in the country for tornados.
And nobody thought to tell us.