Little whirlwinds turn to big ones

By Alan Linda | The Daily Journal

Published 03:09 p.m., May 26, 2009

While driving home from work yesterday afternoon, I saw in the freshly tilled field to my left a small whirlwind working its quirky way across the field. They’re cute when they’re small. These small dust devils are kind of fascinating.

They’re especially fascinating to someone like me who grew up in Iowa and had a close association with the dust devils’ older brothers: tornadoes. Folks up here in northwestern Minnesota profess to have seen their share of real tornadoes. Perhaps some folks really have.

No one in Iowa has to offer proof that they have either seen or lived through a close encounter with one. I missed one of the worst ones to hit close to the folks’ farm because I was at the time involved in yet another sort of tornado, one called Vietnam. I guess this just goes to show that tornadoes come in all shapes and forms.

Charles City is about 16 miles south of where I grew up. In 1968 thirty-some people were killed in that one. We were picking up pieces of Charles City in the fields around home for years after that. One story in particular stands out. A farmer saw the tornado approaching his home, so he jumped in his pickup truck, raced two miles to a neighbor’s place, parked beside that house, and hid in that cellar.

The tornado changed course, left his house alone, removed the house under which he was hiding, and tipped his own pickup truck into the basement, breaking his leg. I guess a story like that also goes to show something, but exactly what, I’m not sure.

Several times a year, mom and/or dad would corner us children and herd us into the basement. Of those several times, one or two would be an actual tornado, but none struck that farm. None have to this date, so the place must be charmed. Dad also said that that farm had never been hailed out. Hail is a natural accompaniment to a tornado, so the two missed us time and time again.

Once, while I was harrowing a field on that farm, I looked over to the other side of that forty and saw a pretty appreciable dust devil forming. My age would have been around 14 or 15, I guess, so the natural inclination was to go over there with the tractor and intercept that particular little whirl wind.

It kept getting bigger. By the time I got into it, it was probably four or five tractor lengths across, and carrying quite a bit of suspended field dust. It was surprisingly strong, once I got into it, much stronger than I had imagined wind could ever possibly be. It beat me up pretty good, shook the tractor like a dog shakes a rat, and was gone. Overall, it was not a good idea, and when the chance came up again later in the year, I stayed the heck away from it.

In early spring, dark, freshly turned earth absorbs enough heat to produce sharp updrafts, which in turn produce quite sharp eddies that went circular. Later in the summer, one hardly ever saw these things, but then, the fields by that time were covered crop.

I got into another mixmaster of whirlwinds one day when I was flying around some nice big fat summer cumulus clouds in a Cessna 172. You know the kind of clouds: white marshmallows, all cute and cuddly. After I had flown through one, I remembered that my instructor had told me not to fly into clouds. What he neglected to add to that warning was why not.

Those clouds? Those big fat cuddly ones? Only luck and a good training got me out the other side right side up. Those clouds house the world’s nastiest little whirlwinds. I later found out that planes have had their wings torn off due to the forces exerted on them while in clouds just like that.

While I was in Vietnam, none of which is very far from an ocean--or sea, I guess they call it there--, tropical storms that came in over the coast were impressive. I spent three days and two nights in a typhoon. Winds never dropped below 70 miles per hour. At the end of that period, nothing on that combat base had a roof. I always wondered where the Vietnamese natives got the corrugated steel they used for their own crudely constructed huts. After that storm, I knew. They found ours, where ever it finally touched down.

That combat base looked like Charles City, Iowa. It did again later, whenever Charlie found the range with his 122 mm rockets.

I guess that just goes to show that, well, little whirlwinds can grow into big ones.

I guess.

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