right hand red, left foot blue, left hand green, right foot yellow

Apparently the controversial meteorological event that hit Madison on Wednesday night has been officially judged to be a "small tornado" rather than the pseudotornado or fauxtornado or wannabe-tornado that was the initial reported. Whatever it was, it missed the RV by no more than two blocks. I was sitting here on my futon, reading a book and being annoyed at how my concentration was being interrupted by my electricity flickering on and off and by that blaring emergency siren. Then I get a call from a neighbor: "Jeremy! A tornado hit just north of here! Let's go look!"

I didn't share quite so much zeal for taking a stroll through devastation, but I did go walk around. Various downed trees and power lines. My hometown was hit by a "very large tornado" when I was eight. That caused an astonishing amount of damage, especially astonished to someone from the town, you walked around and there were all these houses and businesses whose presence you has been accustomed to and that now were just gone. Madison's small tornado was nothing anywhere close to that, but, of course, this provides small consolation to someone standing bewildered on the sidewalk, wondering how they are going to get that tree off their house.

I started to write longer and more scintillating post about all this yesterday morning, but I didn't finish it by the time I had to leave for campus, and when I got back my electricity was out, meaning that post-in-progress was lost forever.