Tornados - A little too close to home...

Back in October last year I wrote a blog about tornados being boring. I just want to go on the record right here saying that I was wrong.

Those of you that keep up to the minute with the news may have seen that a small town called Joplin in the state of Missouri was hit by a massive tornado this evening (Sunday 22 May, US time). According to reports at the minute, about 75% of the town is in ruins. There are many deaths, and a massive amount of people still missing. Very scary stuff.

But here's the bit that makes it particularly scary for us. We were in Joplin yesterday morning. And if we hadn't altered our initial plans while in Joplin, we'd still be there this evening - in fact, we may not have "been here" at all...

We arrived in Joplin Thursday night and attended the wedding of Jonny and Janaye on Friday(Jonny is a friend from Seminary and Janaye rents our basement). The morning of the wedding (Friday morning), the weather was crazy. It was only nine in the morning, but the entire sky was dark (it was just like night-time) and when it rained it absolutely poured!! While we were sitting eating our breakfast we saw what seemed to be like a river flowing down through the gas station next door. Sonia was a little anxious about going out in the weather however she needed a couple of things for the wedding and the people around about the hotel did not seem that concerned.

Sonia's account of the morning: "So as I was driving around I kept one eye on the sky and one on the road. Approximately 2-3 miles in the distance I could see the dark clouds almost touching the ground. I have never seen anything quite like it before. You could just imagine how tornados form so easily when the massive cloud systems are that close to the ground. Anyhow while in the 'dollar tree' store I asked a couple of ladies if this was normal sort of weather for this time of year. They said "somewhat, but that the darkness of the sky was certainly unusual". So then of course I asked why they would be out shopping given the likelihood of a tornado. However they responded saying that you just keep your radio on, and all shops would advise of a tornado warning should one be given by the authorities but its pretty much business as usual unless warned otherwise. Anyhow I was extremely relieved to have picked up the things I needed and be back in the Hotel with family."

This evening (Sunday) as I type this, we are seeing more and more updates from Joplin on the Weather Channel - it looks like the whole town has been flattened, and this is a "town" the size of Hamilton, New Zealand (population approx 170,000). I've just now tried to call the hotel that we stayed in - there is no reply. Almost all the wedding guests that were from out of town for the wedding were staying at the same hotel as us. We don't know if any of them were still there when the tornado hit. The Weather channel is saying that the tornado was a mile wide.

We are currently in a hotel in St Louis (approx half way between Joplin and Louisville) and we have a Tornado watch here in St Louis as well. We've just had a huge thunderstorm pass through with strong winds. We've had plenty of storms since being in the US, but seeing something so devastating so close to us has us a little nervous, especially as there is no basement in this hotel. We might be a little sleepless tonight.

We are thankful that God has kept us safe and taken us out of the path of the tornado, but are also concerned and praying for those that have been affected by the devastation, particularly those that were at the wedding with us.

Keep an eye on http://www.weather.com/ if you want to keep up to date with it all.

Road rage - Kentucky style

One thing we've noticed since being here is that everyone is so polite. People go out of their way to open doors for you, they call you "Sir" or "Ma'am", and are generally very well mannered. This also flows over to drivers on the road. They are very patient, courteous and again, well mannered. It wasn't until we had been driving here for a week or two that we noticed that we would hardly ever hear a car horn, and if we did hear one, it would usually only be a very short polite honk at the lights if the car in front obviously hadn't seen the green light and was sitting there for quite some time.

Well, that is until we had our recent visitors from NZ...

We won't mention any names, as we don't want to embarrass anyone, but one of our visitors decided to have a go driving on our lovely roads here, and in particular, on our very impressive interstate system. And it was getting off one interstate highway to join another highway that the incident occurred. The unnamed driver missed the sign that signaled that the required off ramp was just ahead, and only at the very last moment realised that it had just about passed. Quickly, our guest swerved to the right (off-ramps are typically on the right over here - naturally), crossing the median painted lines that signified the divide between the interstate that the car was leaving and the off ramp being taken.

Although on sealed road all the time, and there was no great danger or anything like that, there did happen to be a car close behind who obviously got a fright with the sudden swerve in front of him and proceeded to sound his horn, long and hard, in a most un-Kentucky like fashion. He then quickly pulled out to the right and came up along side our car, window down, fist out the window and shouting. After a few moments, he pulled back in behind and then stayed close behind in what might be taken as an intimidating fashion, while the occupants of our car giggled nervously at what had just happened. No great harm done, and it was all over - the guy behind would get over it.

Or so they thought...

A mile or so down the road, the car behind then pulls up beside our car again and stays level with it in the right-hand lane. Sonia, imagining what the guy was doing, suggested everyone just don't look at him. But curiosity got the better and she glanced over... only to see him looking across at our car with a sheepish look on his face and mouthing the words "I'm sorry!!".

?!?

That's right - this guy had been all angry, honked his horn and shook his fist out the window just a moment ago, but it was seemingly so out of character for these parts that he had become remorseful and felt he had to go out of his way to apologise at 70 miles per hour on Interstate 64.

There you go - road rage Kentucky style. You have to see it to believe it...

Mammoth Caves

The other day, we took Sonia's parents (aka Nana and Grandee) about 2 hours south of Louisville to a place called Mammoth Caves. An amazing place, and as you might guess from the name, they're really big...

We took a guided tour through approx 2 miles of the cave system, but there are over 390 miles of caves discovered, with more being explored all the time. They claim it is the largest underground cave system in the world, and I have no reason to doubt them. Inside, they live up to their name to an even greater extent. There are massive caverns inside, one that stretches some 50 metres high.

The caves also have quite a history. Discovered in 1798, tours started there in 1838 and have had tours go through almost every day since then. They also used to have church services in there in the summer to escape the heat. Once down in the caves, the temperature is always the average temperature of the outside air for the past 10 years. This means that the temperature almost never changes (a steady 12-13 degrees Celcius). So there has to be a significant sustained temperature change for years for the temperature to change at all inside the caves...!

We had a fantastic day there, enjoying an amazing part of God's creation.

The Heat is On!

Sitting on the desktop of our computer here, we have two little weather buttons. One has the local weather for Lousiville Kentucky, and one has the weather for Hamilton NZ. For months now, the two have been miles apart. We'd usually check and see that Hamilton was sitting at about 28 degrees, while Louisville was something like -10 degrees.

However, the gap has been slowly getting smaller, to the point where just a moment ago I checked them and Louisville was sitting at 17 degrees and Hamilton was 18 degrees - we're getting close! Admittedly it's midday here and only 6am in Hamilton, but it's still encouraging. Tomorrow, we're forcast to get 20 degrees. Not bad considering we're still in February (third month of winter).

There will still be some colder weather ahead, but it really feels like spring is just around the corner - it can't come soon enough. Anyhow, we're off for a bike ride...

Edit: It's now late March and we've had temperatures in the high twenties (celcius) as well as a couple of small snow falls since this blog post. One of the snow falls was only two days after a 28 degree day... Hopefully it will all calm down soon.

Here's a little bit about Louisville

Just thought I'd write and let you know a little about Louisville.

Louisville is a city made up of a bunch of little cities. The original Louisville (now a suburb called "Old Louisville") was not very large, and is now an inner city suburb. Around it were a bunch of mini cities/towns that over time each grew to the point where the boundaries between cities was so blurred that they decided to make one large city called Louisville. Therefore, with the exception of a traditional central business district, Louisville feels like a very geographically dispersed city. It feels much much larger than Auckland, although the population is probably a little lower (population stats vary wildly for Louisville as it depends on which of the surrounding suburbs you include and don't include). The most general consensus is that the population is around 700,000 to 800,000.

However, it has an amazing inters ate/motorway system going both north/south (Interstate 65) and east/west (Interstate 64) plus two massive circular motorways, one circling the inner suburbs (Interstate 264, which as far as I can recall is at least 6-8 lanes in every part that I've driven on it so far), and one circling the outer suburbs (Interstate 265). This makes for a very efficient roading system. They still have heavy traffic in patches when going into the central city just as any city does, but these are very minor when compared to the likes of what Auckland experiences. All these motorways, and Louisville's not really a very big city for US standards.

Adding to the interesting layout of Louisville is the fact that downtown is located right next to the Ohio river, with the state of Indiana across the river. There are a couple of mini-cities just across the bridge from downtown Louisville in Southern Indiana which are, for all intents and purposes, part of the Louisville city, although unofficially. People who work in Louisville often live over the bridge and people who live in Louisville will often go shopping over in the Southern Indiana suburbs. It's really just an extension of Louisville, even though it's a completely different state. For that reason, the greater Louisville area is often referred to as "Kentuckiana".

We feel like we're reasonably enclosed here. We cannot see any mountains or hills, we simply see buildings, houses, trees and lots of big roads. We had been here a few months and went for a drive up into Indiana for an hour or so and suddenly realised, once up the top of a bit of a hill, that we hadn't been to any elevation for months. It's all just flat around Louisville... One of the really nice things about the city though (outside of downtown) is all the trees and greenery. There are lots of great parks and green areas, and all the suburbs are really old and so have lovely trees all through them.


Kentucky is a southern state with all the southern hospitality and friendliness that comes with that and has the largest protestant seminary in the world sitting in its suburbs (plus a couple of smaller ones). All this makes for a very interesting and uniquely friendly city. It's part of the bible belt but you'd really call this a bit of a bible bubble. There is an incredible number of strong and thriving churches around the city most of which having a large influence from the faculty, staff, or students of the baptist seminary. This makes for a very "Christianised" city. A huge number of businesses are overtly "Christian" in their ownership and operation, and everyone you talk to is somehow connected with a church. But it's the general warmth and friendliness of the people that has been the most interesting. I've often thought that New Zealanders were, generally speaking, a friendly group of people, but as a generalisation, these guys over here have us all beat. We're constantly surprised at the courtesy, politeness and friendliness of the average person on the street, even when they're driving on the road!

All in all, it's a really nice place to live. It's not a tourist destination at all, and while there is plenty to do in the city, there is nothing worth travelling a massive distance for. The possible exception to this is the massive new basketball/concert facility that has just been completed downtown. Although Louisville and Kentucky only have college basketball teams (they don't have an NBA team), their new facility rivals any of the famous NBA facilities in the US. College basketball is huge here...

We're really enjoying the city. It's a nice place to live, it doesn't get the consistent snow of the northern states, and it doesn't usually get the consistently sweltering temperatures of the more southern states. That said, it's far colder and hotter than we've ever experienced!! It's a really great place to have a family - somewhere that we're very happy to be for the next couple of years...