Tornado hits Hamburg!

A rare thing happened 2 days ago: A tornado hit in the southern part of Hamburg. That was really weird for me, coming as I do from "Tornado Alley" in the US. I grew up in Ohio, where tornado watches and warnings were a part of life, and we even had tornado drills in school, just like we had fire drills. And, quite frankly, I've always been terrified of tornados. Earthquakes, fine (I was in the 1989 quake in San Francisco). Blizzards, no problem. Hurricanes - well, I've never been in one, but at least you get warned days in advance! But for some reason, tornados really freak me out. So I spent yesterday staring intently at the sky outside my apartment, looking for tell-tale tornado weather signs.

I was amused, however, at the indignant German response to the poor meteorologists: "why didn't we get a warning!", they all cried. Well, good people of Hamburg, you can't predict these things! You can give an alert if it looks like conditions are right for tornado development, but that's about all you can do. Even with the sophisticated technology we have in the US, we can't really predict when and where a tornado will happen. At least it looks like it was only a T1 or T2 tornado - not a very strong one.