Ok, two out of the three of those are true, the other is just added to get your attention, I'll leave it to your clever skills of deduction to figure out which one.
I spent last week back in Paducah, KY for my second and final week of training to become a six sigma black belt. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun to be able to spend time with other younger engineers. We had a house party a couple nights at the home of one of the engineers who lives there. The bigger one was held on Thursday night, and I must say it was a blast. It's nice to feel like even though I'm into my grownup career, I can still have a good time with my peers every now and then.
Funny story from my training: our instructor had a very unfortunate tic. Every few minutes, he would "adjust" himself. I hope that's clear enough, do I need to give you a picture? Ok, fine...
Anyway, we all noticed this during the first week of training, and so we decided to keep track of the number of times he did this. The grand total: at least 225 times in 36 hours of training. If you're keeping score, that translates to a scratch every 9.6 minutes.
On to the return home, my plane got in at about 4. It was kind of cool on the flight back from Memphis. All of the southern US was covered in clouds, but the plane cruised above the drearier ones. To the west, however, you could clearly see the top of a thunderhead that would be shortly behind me on the way to Mobile. The first cell hit around 7 PM and it was a doozy. The storm was as bad as anything I'd seen all summer. By the time it passed to eastern Alabama/western Florida, it was spawning tornadoes.
Skip forward to 4 AM. I woke up in the middle of the night. At first I didn't know why, but now I know it was because of the storm. At around 4:30 the storm was in full force. It was louder outside than anything I had ever heard weather produce and the power went out. I just laid there in bed listening to it all blow through. In all likelihood, the sirens went off, but I didn't hear them.
The power never came back on, and at 5:30 I had to try going through my morning routine sans light. It was a little frustrating. I would constantly be setting either my keys or cell phone down, but in the dark not be able to find them again. Frustrating.
It wasn't until I got to work that I heard about the significance of the storm I listened to. Apparently a tornado touched down and blew down some trees and power lines while significantly damaging a McDonald's and gas station. According to Google Maps, these buildings are only 0.5 miles west of my apartment, and the thing about tornadoes is they don't necessarily follow the roads.
The reality of this was a little unsettling. Imagine if the cell had been only a half mile off from where it was. Or if it were a little stronger and the twister spent a while on the ground. In all likelihood it would move east, and tornadoes are known to move at around 30 mph. That means that a stronger tornado could have reached me in as little as one minute.
I guess it's best not to think along these lines, it played out the way it played out, and I came out fine. I guess I should count my blessings.
