#TBT: My Childhood Severe Weather Phobia

Seeing that today is the statewide tornado drill across Minnesota, and seeing as it's also a Throwback Thursday, it reminds me of scary it used to be when I was a kid growing up in central Wisconsin and any severe weather warning was issued.

It wasn't so much that I was scared of an actual tornado; luckily, one never came through our neighborhood and I've never had any direct experience with one. But the slides and graphics the local TV stations used to interrupt 'regular programming' when a warning was issued were enough to scare the pants of me!

Of course, back then, the weather technology wasn't anywhere near as advanced as it is today. There wasn't any Doppler radar, and when warnings were issued, they were usually for the entire county-- even though Marathon County, where I lived, was about twice the size of Olmsted County and covered a vast amount of miles. Which meant that the actual storm could have been 30 to 40 miles away from our house, and probably wasn't a threat to our little neighborhood anyway. To this day, though, when I hear the names of any of the surrounding counties, like Portage, Lincoln, Vilas, or Oneida, it still reminds me of hearing those names read during severe weather warnings in the late 70's.

So even while the weather itself might not have been all that threatening, when those warning tones and pictures came on Channel 7, let me tell you, I started to get scared. In those pictures, the skies were always pitch black and there were several bolts of lightening cutting through the dark skies. They looked terrifying. Even worse was the graphic they used for a tornado warning, complete with the dark grey clouds and a white funnel cloud bearing down on some unsuspecting community. It was scary stuff-- at least, to a young kid.

Luckily, after having been on the radio for over 25 years now, I've had to broadcast my share of severe weather warnings. And while I still have a healthy respect for Mother Nature and fury she can whip up during severe weather season, I don't get quite as scared as I did 35 years ago. But back then, though, it was scary. Did you ever have a fear of severe weather when you were a kid?