"Early Friday, as dark and threatening clouds rolled in over Grand Forks, I scanned the sky for hints of danger. What I saw last week in the tornado’s wake in the Belcourt and Rolla, N.D., areas changed my thinking about thunderstorms. I am more cautious and a lot more aware of the storms’ power.

As a child, I loved to sit on the windowsill like our big gray cat and watch a thunderstorm. (I’d better say I was young and slim, and the windowsills were larger in those old houses.) Sometimes, I’d have to close my eyes because the lightning strikes were so bright, but I found the storms wild and beautiful.

I grew out of that phase with the strong encouragement of my grandmother and mother. They always were nervous when a big storm came through the reservation. They would pull the shades and curtains and tell us to sit quietly in the middle of the room. I never knew why we had to be quiet because that only added to our nervousness.

Were thunderstorms and tornadoes as common years ago? While it may seem as if there are more, there also are fewer lives lost. I looked up tornadoes on several Web sites. (What did we ever do without the Internet?) The sites reminded me that weather forecasting is a relatively new science. Decades ago, tracking storms such as tornadoes, hurricanes and cyclones wasn’t nearly as precise as it is today. Doppler radar and other technologies have improved our warning systems, and as a result, the number of fatalities has dropped.

Those technologies in combination with radio and TV meteorologists are a tremendous help. We can act accordingly when there’s a dangerous storm in our area."

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COLUMNIST DORREN YELLOW BIRD: Watching the sky with a nervous eye (The Grand Forks Herald 7/12)
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