I’ve been afraid of tornadoes all of my life. That’s what happens when you grow up in tornado alley and have them swoop low over your house when you’re young. As a matter of fact, that’s one reason why I now live west of the Rocky Mountains. We don’t have to worry about them as much.

That was the case until October 6, 2010. Then we had 8 tornadoes in Northern Arizona. I kept an eye on the Weather Channel as it tracked the circulation of one as it passed over my area. It made me very nervous, but I handled it better than I expected, and just went about my business.

When Jeff and I visited Flagstaff’s Snowbowl, we discovered downed trees from those EF-1 and EF-2 tornadoes. Two of them crossed Hwy. 180, and the damage track from the one near Kendrick’s Park was about a half-mile wide.

When I got home, I did some research to confirm that’s where the tornadoes hit. I found a NOAA website that shows weather maps of that day, lists where and when the tornadoes hit, size of hail in various locations, and even has a Google maps page of their trajectories. One of these tornadoes had a thirty-mile long path.

This was the most tornadoes that Arizona has ever had in one day. So I still feel better about living in the west, rather than in the Midwest or east. Hopefully, we’ll never have that kind of system through here again.