#I don't think this was tornado weather it was just a regular thunderstorm?

[hauntedtotem]

This one is actually The Sun at around 11am.

Basically noon in the middle of I think June or July? we got a very sudden storm that made the sky go black in seconds. Very cool 👍

[thelastspeecher]

eregyrn-falls replied to your post: “I've been watching a lot of tornado related...”

tornadoes are something that terrified me as a little kid, no doubt due to television. (i can remember a nightmare from early childhood about a tornado.) i grew up in eastern PA, where at the time we didn't have any. so it was the IDEA of them that terrified me. honestly, it still does. i would very very VERY much prefer never to live in a place that gets them with any regularity.

​i realize they're old hat for you, and that's true for anyone who lives with a natural phenomenon. you come to respect it, rather than be terrified of it. but for me, i can't get past the suddenness of them. the fact that they can strike in the middle of the night when you might have almost no warning at all. while they aren't completely unpredictable (obviously there are observable weather fronts and stuff), to me, they feel that way.

the natural disasters that i can deal with are hurricanes, and blizzards. both of those are things you see coming for DAYS. you can get out ahead of them. you can take steps to protect your house and your pets and yourself. (i mean, both of those in theory, assuming you have the means and the financial situation.) earthquakes and tornadoes are too sudden for me and that's why they scare me.

oh you're not the only one who's had a tornado nightmare! one of the worst nightmares I've had in my entire life was a tornado nightmare!

I think that what allows me to continue living in a tornado-prone area despite my general anxiety over like, idk, life, is two things: 1) tornado predictions give a crazy amount of warning nowadays, and 2) I live in a tornado-prone area, I've had a few close calls, but it's not like I live in Moore, Oklahoma lmao.

most tornado warnings aren't even that a tornado has been spotted by someone or confirmed by radar. most of them are "radar indicated rotation", meaning that a thunderstorm with a rotating cloud has been detected on radar. which doesn't mean tornado. it does mean a storm capable of a tornado and more likely to produce one, but it doesn't mean a tornado. or even a funnel cloud!

very VERY rarely are people caught off guard by a tornado anymore. FEMA says the average amount of time between a tornado warning being issued and the tornado or storm striking the area is 10 to 15 minutes. plenty of time to grab your emergency kit and go to your safe place. we have tornado watches if the weather is favorable and often know days in advance whether we'll be hit by weather conducive for tornadogenesis.

and even when we don't know in advance, like I said, we still have plenty of warning! about a week ago, I woke up to sirens, then ten minutes later, heard them again. which I knew likely meant a tornado warning had been issued (the first time, I checked my phone and saw it was severe thunderstorm and just rolled over to sleep some more lol). and before I could check, my phone went off, blaring the same alarm as an Amber Alert. which I knew 100% meant tornado warning. and it was. my roommate and I had time to use the bathroom, grab the dogs and emergency bag, and even take the dogs outside really quick to pee before the storm hit us! and we didn't have a tornado watch in effect. there weren't supposed to be conditions for tornadoes that morning.

and like I said, I don't live in Moore. if I did, I wouldn't even DREAM of living somewhere without a basement. as it is, I fucking hate that my best option is a hallway on the first floor. we've gotten tornadoes before. some have gotten close to me. one literally lifted over a building I was in. but thankfully, we're not as prone as other locations in my state; the storms tend to lose some steam by the time they reach here. and the tornadoes that do spawn tend to be lower level, again, because of the storms losing steam by the time they get here.

I know a lot about the science of tornadoes and grew up in Tornado Alley (or adjacent, depending on what graphic you use), so I know that our current methods are so flipping good at protecting us. we DO have warning. not as much as for a hurricane, but generally speaking, enough to, like I said, use the bathroom and grab the pets. earthquakes...yeah those don't typically give much warning, but that's something scientists are working on. buildings in earthquake-prone areas are built to withstand them (much like many buildings in tornado-prone areas are built to withstand severe storms), and people grow up learning what to do in an earthquake. (which is find a table to hide under, essentially, btw.)

no, what scares ME the most are wildfires.

you're flat-out fucked over by those.

[kowaindar0u]

//

Can't sleep cause it's storming and hailing and it's louuuuud (and bright lol)

So naturally I'm thinking about this kind of severe weather at yuichi's honmaru 🤔

like obvious it rains... a lot, and regular thunderstorms are common

But I like to imagine perhaps during particularly bad storms everyone huddles into a central area both for safety and to just... Be comforted with each other 😭 perhaps it's underground so they can all sleep without the Ridiculous noise of hail (and like... I don't imagine there being tornados but the honmaru is sort of a pocket dimension (?) right? So who knows lol

Also you KNOW after a hailstorm there's gonna be toudans running around throwing the hail at each other lol

Also Yuichi can often be found with his doors open, on the engawa, or sometimes even on the roof just enjoying the downpour lol

Since he attributes the constant rain to matching the constant chunk of gloominess in his own being (I always liked the idea that honmarus also sort of manifest from the saniwa/their essence(?)), he tends to feel extra guilty (and a bit embarrassed/ashamed) about it being so present for everyone there, and it causing problems 😔

But sometimes he enjoys the rain and finds it refreshing and invigorating...

And any time he sees his touken danshi enjoying the rain, whether it be simply watching it or going out to play in it, it makes his heart happy

Then of course he remembers they are all probably deficient in vitamin D and is like damn

Actually yes I think between Yuichi, yagen, all the swords who help in the kitchen, and the...repair-ers? Smiths? (Honestly the smithing in-citadel confuses me a little), I think they would (or will learn to in time) have measures in place to try and compensate-- lots of vitamin D foods, making sure everyone has check-ins for their emotional/physical well-being ... Stuff they would do anyway I suppose but just checking more specifically

Honestly thank goodness there's plenty of pretty trees and flowers, it helps things not look quite so drab in the rain since there is no shortage of greenery and other colors

AGH i'm eepy but maybe I'll think more tomorrow

[bondsmagii]

I think the term “natural disaster” is somewhat dead at this point. The current geologic era we’re living in is called the anthropocene, because humans are a major factor in the way Earth’s climate and geology are formed. Besides earthquakes, it’s really hard to say if a storm would’ve occurred under ‘normal’ conditions. But also we don’t have a reference for ‘normal’ anymore, because we’ve been messing with the climate too long. However, we do know that climate change stopped a period of global cooling.

I would disagree, to some extent. there are always going to be natural disasters. thunderstorms that produce tornadoes are natural. volcanic eruptions are natural. hurricanes are natural, and so on and so forth. these things were always going to happen, and have been documented since well before certain humans started fucking things up on the exponential scale that corporations are doing now. storms will always occur under "normal" conditions -- they always have and they always will. there are storms on planets not even inhabited by humans. they are natural; they are just as natural as any other part of the planet.

however, to say that climate change has had zero impact on global weather patterns is totally inaccurate. as the planet warms, certain natural disasters like hurricanes are going to become more frequent and more powerful -- we've seen this happen already. hurricanes form over warm oceans, and the hotter the ocean is, the more powerful the storm. generally speaking, hurricanes follow the east coast of the US in a curve pattern. sometimes they cross into the Gulf of Mexico and get a power boost from the warm waters there, but generally speaking they all wear themselves out over the cooler waters up north (if they don't wear out over land). however, if the oceans continue to warm, I hypothesise that some of the most powerful hurricanes will have enough steam to follow the curve all the way to Europe. the UK has seen the tail ends of hurricanes before, and they were pretty violent -- but if this carries on, I sincerely think the UK and Ireland will have a hurricane season.

with tornadoes, it's a little bit more unclear. tornadoes form so commonly in the US because of a geographical pattern that is unique to the area. there are four factors to this area that creates what we know as Tornado Alley:

cold dry air coming from the north west

warm dry air coming from the south

warm moist air coming from the Gulf

the jet stream

this creates the perfect environment for tornadoes to form, as the collision of these cold and warm fronts is incredibly pronounced, emphasised by the Rockies and the dry line (a line that seperates warm and cold air). this is why this area of America has so many tornadoes, and it would have been this way even without humans around. there's no way of telling what impact climate change might have on the frequency of these tornadoes, but all of them are still very much natural disasters, as there's a high chance they would have occured anyway. in my opinion, the clue will be where tornadoes occur. I think that Canada will start seeing more tornadoes as their climate warms, and other places like Europe might see the slow development of their own tornado alleys, too.

as for the most recent storms of December 2021, it's certainly highly unusual for a tornado to occur at this time of the year and at that time of the day, but not completely impossible. it has happened before -- however, the question is, if winters continue to become warmer, will December tornadoes become a regular thing? climate change isn't creating its own disasters -- these things will always be a natural occurance. climate change is, technically, natural: the planet's response to what we're doing, just as lung cancer is a response to smoking cigarettes. it's tecnically natural but not wholly independent of humans, but I think that assuming that something humans do is unnatural is inaccurate. we're part of this planet too, and this includes the harm we do. natural disasters will always remain natural, but they might start to look different.