There must be a place where there isn’t any trouble…Do you think there is such a place? There MUST be!
Consider parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and New Mexico. Avoid TX, MO, OK, MS, LA, FL, IN, IL, AL, TN,…
So western North Dakota and the northwest corner of Minnesota look dependably uneventful. Trust me, they actually are. Grindingly so.
Among others we had a tornado touch down three times, or a hit of three separate tornadoes (jury’s out yet), in North Minneapolis yesterday. Not near as bad as what’s been happening in the South US, but bad enough for us sleepy Hobbit-like Minneapolitans. Lotsa destroyed property and mongo trees flung around. People, and not just a few, will be needing to rely on generators for a couple of weeks, looks like. But no fatalities that I know of, so that’s good.
One so far, some guy hit by a tree through the windshield of a van, from what MPR reported.
For what it was, I would be surprised if there hadn’t been any.
Robert MacIntyre, of the Raptor Resource Project was killed, a very sad loss.
This is a bit close to home: I didn’t know Rob personally, but the mother of a young lady I know (a budding ITM fluter), works with the Project. A sad loss indeed.
Thanks for all the replies…I had my tongue stuck most of the way into my cheek with the “OZ” link. My objective was Satire in a world full of Chaos. I guess I was reminiscing about the “Glory Days” of the 60’s, you know, Mayberry RFD and Beaver Cleaver etc.(sigh) 
These be yer so-called “interesting times”, all right. Nostalgia hadn’t even occurred to me (as usual, what with me being by nature not very nostalgic) until you just mentioned it.
Go to the place of the disaster as another disaster is less likely to happen there. Everything else is on nature’s hit list.
in the interest of TMI
Why Does the U.S. Midwest Get So Many Severe Thunderstorms?
Last night another tragic bout of severe weather struck the U.S., Midwest, with a strong tornado leveling a large section of Joplin, Missouri (see video below). It may well happen again today. Looking at the climatology of U.S. tornadoes (below), you see that although the High Plains are struck most frequently, the southeast, and the upper Midwest have significant activity.
I really wonder what is considered a natural disaster considering that it usually is used to describe .
I remember hearing of some people that lived on a flood plain that would move things to the second floor during the occasional flood and other basic preparations. Another area has banned asphalt shingles to help prevent fires from spreading due to the local risk of wild fires. There is always a cost/benefit calculation needed for structural protection. For example homes built in Minnesota would most likely have different codes and regulations than in California due to their risks, but are these disasters adequately protected against and these are just the outliers or are these due to poor risk assessment?
Other disasters are being caused by human made changes in the local topography/environment and where people decide to build. Land slides from removal of protective brush, compounding drought with poor farming practices as in the dirty thirty’s, disruption of the natural flooding of rivers that cause secondary problems, etc. Along the Red River the discussion about flooding has become difficult because prevention of flooding in one area will just push the problem further north. Calling these things natural disasters when there is human contribution almost seems like a way to shrug responsibility and say it is nature’s fault and out of our hands.
I agree with Stephen Hawking that the survival of the human species depends on expanding into Space. Humans were not designed to exist in Space, but the technology to travel beyond Earth and terraform planets like Mars must be made a Human priority or we will cease to exist.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/06/stephen-hawking-to-human_n_673387.html
I can’t for the life of me remember a natural disaster happening in my hometown until my brother told me about this newspaper story. This disaster was naturally bound to happen.
Everyone in my hometown is completely badass, even the ice cream truck drivers.