Forces of Nature: Natural Disasters Portrayed in Art
 
The Night of the Twister
Jeffery Boss, http://poets.com/JefferyBoss.html

The roar of thunder throughout the night, The whisping of trees, all leaves in flight, A flash of lighting-Dark clouds-Bright!

It is a summer time storm.

Calmness falls across the land, bringing end to the rain.
Air heavyness grows, it's not the same!

A thrust of clouds- up in the sky! It's ripping around in wretched flight!

A twister falls atop the land Ripping, Trashing,Throwing up sand.

Across the meadows, some trees aloft. Twisting and wasting, throwing up crops.

Look out!
Here it comes!
Across the fence!
No time for cover!
HIT THE DITCH!

The wind is whirling, throwing up sticks, I can feel the pain of the xylem mix.

The racket continued on down the hill. Out by the pig pen, throwing up swill.

The monster went on around the bend...To die a slow death... was this the end?

The stars appeared on the edge of the storm. No more lashing and thrashing- the air was warm.

We all survived that awful night
The Night of the Twister and it's frightful flight! Student Reading

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900, by Frank Baum

from the Project Gutenberg Official Home Site, http://promo.net/pg/

"Quick, Dorothy!" Aunt Em screamed. "Run for the cellar!" Toto jumped out of Dorothy's arms and hid under the bed, and the girl started to get him. Aunt Em, badly frightened, threw open the trap door in the floor and climbed down the ladder into the small, dark hole. Dorothy caught Toto at last and started to follow her aunt. When she was halfway across the room there came a great shriek from the wind, and the house shook so hard that she lost her footing and sat down suddenly upon the floor.

Then a strange thing happened. The house whirled around two or three times and rose slowly through the air. Dorothy felt as if she were going up in a balloon. The north and south winds met where the house stood, and made it the exact center of the cyclone. In the middle of a cyclone the air is generally still, but the great pressure of the wind on every side of the house raised it up higher and higher, until it was at the very top of the cyclone; and there it remained and was carried miles and miles away as easily as you could carry a feather.

It was very dark, and the wind howled horribly around her, but Dorothy found she was riding quite easily. After the first few whirls around, and one other time when the house tipped badly, she felt as if she were being rocked gently, like a baby in a cradle. Toto did not like it. He ran about the room, now here, now there, barking loudly; but Dorothy sat quite still on the floor and waited to see what would happen.

Hour after hour passed away, and slowly Dorothy got over her fright; but she felt quite lonely, and the wind shrieked so loudly all about her that she nearly became deaf. At first she had wondered if she would be dashed to pieces when the house fell again; but as the hours passed and nothing terrible happened, she stopped worrying and resolved to wait calmly and see what the future would bring. At last she crawled over the swaying floor to her bed, and lay down upon it; and Toto followed and lay down beside her. In spite of the swaying of the house and the wailing of the wind, Dorothy soon closed her eyes and fell fast asleep

Children Will Always Remember That Night

http://www.theindependent.com/stories/060390/twi_children03.html

Starr Elementary School in Grand Island, Nebraska, was heavily damaged by tornadoes on June 3, 1980. When school resumed in the fall, classes were held in small, two-room trailers until they could be moved into the reconstructed school after Christmas. The teachers tried to be sensitive to the needs of children who had been through such a traumatic experience.

“We broke up into small groups, and the children shared stories about the tornadoes. I felt they needed to talk about it among their peers,'' a teacher said. ”At first they were tentative and didn't say much. You could see the tension on their faces. But as they relived their stories, all of this emotion came out. It was an outpouring.” Most of the children expressed fear for themselves, their family members and pets, the teacher recalled. She said she was surprised at how interested the children were in hearing each others' stories. “They wanted to share their stories, and they showed concern for each other.”

Lisa Bainbridge was in the sixth grade at Starr when classes resumed in the fall after the tornadoes. “I remember when we did the drills that year, I took it a lot more seriously. I vividly remember being under my desk and it was so quiet, not like years before,” Bainbridge said. Bainbridge lived on Arrowhead Road, close to Starr, in the house where her parents still live. What Bainbridge saw while walking in her neighborhood is something she will never forget. “I went to one of my friends' houses. It was gone. The school was gone. I remember standing there crying. Seeing the school devastated had a really big effect on me.” Since that time, Bainbridge said she gets nervous and frightened when severe weather is in the area. “I immediately want to run down to the basement. I get shaky.”

Steve Reynolds was in first grade at Starr when the tornadoes struck. Although his house was destroyed, Reynolds said he cannot remember being too worried about tornadoes when he the school started doing drills again in the fall. “I never, never thought it would happen again, not in the same place,” Reynolds explained. “Now if a siren goes off, I go outside and look for the tornado.”

Make a Tornado in a Bottle

What You Need:

• two plastic soda bottles with plastic caps
• clear "krazy glue"
• duct tape
• food coloring

What You Do:

Glue the flat ends of two bottle caps together. Let the glue dry overnight. Wrap the duct tape neatly around the outside of the double cap. After the glue has dried, have an adult use a drill with a wide bit to make a roughly half-inch hole through the center of the caps. The hole should be just about as wide as possible. Fill one of the bottles about three-quarters full with water. Add 10 drops of food coloring. Screw the double cap on the bottle with water in it, and then screw the empty bottle on top. Turn the contraption upside-down, give it a swirl, and see what happens!

What's Happening?

Gravity pulls the water in the top bottle down into the empty one. But the bottom bottle isn't really empty. It's filled with air, which gets pushed into the upper bottle as water rushes in. The air "punches" a hole in the water coming down, so it has clear passage into the top bottle. The water coming down swirls around the hole, making a whirlpool.

http://nyelabs.kcts.org/homedemos/printable/demo12.html

VOCABULARY

Tornado - a violent, rotating column of air extending from a thunderstorm to the ground; one of nature’s most violent storms; also called twisters, cyclones, or funnel clouds.

Natural disasters - tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, thunderstorms, volcanoes, wildfires, mudslides, droughts, blizzards, and avalanches.
meteorologist: scientist who studies the weather.
mitigation: any activities that prevent, reduce, or relieve the damage caused by disasters.