Tornado in Tennessee, but not here

When we first moved to TN about 2 years ago, my mom would call whenever bad weather was in the news. To forestall any worry out there, we are fine this morning in the northeast corner of the state. It looks like those poor people out in western TN have a massive cleanup ahead of them though. The city of Jackson, between Memphis and Nashville, was hit very hard.

It does feel like "tornado weather" here -- unseasonably warm, very humid and low pressure on the barometer. Yesterday on my daily dog walk, I became so overheated I had to leave my hat, gloves and jacket on the trail to be picked up on my way back home. The thermometer said 70 at noon, and that was a new record high for early February in this area.

We don't have enough flat land around here for a tornado to really get going and pick up speed. Too many geographical features break up the formation of twisters, and we have the hills and mountain ridges here. If anything, we are more likely to have an earthquake here than a tornado. (I recently found out that this silly round house is built on a flexing earthquake "pad," as the man who built it was from California).

So, no worries here, just an unusual tropical heat wave.