Xanthippe Voorhees

Today, when the students entered the Danger Shop, they would find themselves not in the usual classroom but in flat grassland, stretching for as far as the eye could see in every direction. The sky overhead was a deep, eerie green.

"The storms did indeed dance," Thor reported to his students. "Humberto and Imelda have both dissipated now, but before they did, Humberto pulled Imelda away from the coast of the United States and toward Bermuda." He sounded quite pleased about that, because storm god. Bermuda was probably less pleased.

"But now, let us turn away from the storms of the sea and look to the storms of the land. Tornadoes, to be precise. We are currently in the United States, the country Fandom Island lies within, but in a different part: Oklahoma, part of the Great Plains, and part of Tornado Alley. The United States is the most tornado-prone country on Earth, experiencing more than one thousand per year. Why? Three factors of geography. The United States is a large enough country, north to south, that it experiences frequent collisions between cooler fronts coming down from Canada and the Arctic and warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, which produce storms that may become tornadic in nature. Its mountain ranges tend to run north-south instead of east-west, meaning there is nothing to halt these fronts, or these storms, once they get going. Instead, there are two vast, open spaces: the Great Plains and the Mississippi River and its delta, creating ideal conditions for storms to roll, and roll, and roll."

Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance.

"Tornadoes are fickle creatures. They will touch down, destroy, and then lift off and spare. I have seen a brick building destroyed next to a trailer park left untouched. You cannot stop a tornado. You cannot control it. All you can do is hide, and hope. Next week, we will discuss the best ways to do that."

After a moment, Thor thought to add, more conversationally, "Oh. A green sky does not necessarily indicate a tornado is coming. It has to do with the quality of the light, and the storm having abundant moisture in it. Still, storms with abundant moisture are more likely to spawn tornadoes, so it is not a notion entirely without merit."