I grew up amongst the rolling hills of western Kentucky; the region is commonly known as Tornado Alley. A tornado is a violent rotating, closed column of low-pressure air which often accompanies stormy weather.
A tornado stretches from the ground to the clouds above and can travel at 483 km/h leaving a path of destruction behind it. Tornado Alley is a region located in the United States between the Rocky Mountains of the West, and the Appalachia Mountains of the East.
Warm air comes from the Gulf of Mexico and clashes with cooler dry air that creeps down from the Northern polar region. The cool dry air and the warm moist air meet and clash directly in the central United States causing a season of beautiful but destructive weather.
Many times during my childhood, tornados threatened my community. Many houses through the Midwest come equipped with storm cellars. Storm cellars are like basements except they are for storage and protection.
My house did not have a cellar, so my family would pack a flashlight and radio and go to our neighbor's cellar. We always brought flashlights so if we lost electricity we could still see. We brought a radio so we could listen to the news to hear exactly where the tornado was traveling.
Before coming to Kinmen, I was a teacher in rural, Western Alabama. This particular area of Alabama is historically poor, so the houses are manufactured cheaply, and overall less safe. My house in Alabama, for example, was new but was constructed completely from recycled materials.
On two occasions a tornado came so close to my house that it shook so violently that I crawled into the bathtub for safety. In late April 2011, 358 tornadoes touched down in Alabama and the southern United States - the largest concentration of tornadoes in the country's history. During my two years of service, many of my students lost their homes and family members to destructive tornadoes.
Tornados are a disastrous and extreme form of weather. Where I'm from in the Tornado Alley, they come about in the springtime, which is the most beautiful time of year. It is amazing that in such a wonderful and pleasant time of the year, there can