The Tower Is Down

It was a sunny day in Kansas and in Topeka, and it was unusually windy. However, that wasn't the worst of it, the sky was dark with clouds, and there was something unusual going on.

Kansas was well known for tornado's. It sits in the heart of "Tornado Alley, a central region of the United States where cold dry air from Canada, clashes with warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. Kansas averages about 80 to 90 tornadoes each year, ranking among the top states nationally for total activity. Most tornadoes happen between mid- April and June, with roughly 74% of all activity occurring during these Spring and early Summer months.

The sky often gets dark, gloomy or takes on a bruised greenish-black or deep grey color before or during a tornado, but this was totally different.

There were streaks of orange lights streaming, and lighting the sky, and the residents of Topeka did not know why.

The difference between a tornado, and a bomb explosion are intent.

A bomb explosion is a man-made (artificial) event caused by chemical or nuclear reactions, while a tornado is a natural weather phenomenon driven by atmospheric conditions and supercell thunderstorms.

A bomb explosion relies on a finite store of stored chemical or nuclear potential energy.

The people of Topeka didn't know exactly what it was that had taken place. There was a blinding flash like a massive instant sunrise, and the initial fireball rapidly followed by a dimming effect. An iconic towering mushroom cloud formed within minutes. The residents looked up at the sky, and saw it turn a dark orange, smoky with a white haze, with a deep violet-blue glow near the atmospheric glow. No one knew where it came from.

Everyone started running towards the shelter, (the tornado shelter), and they glanced down at their cell phone, and it was a blank screen.

Everyone started screaming, "the cell tower is down, a tornado is hitting us big time." Head for the shelter."

The shelter was underground, and it had been there for years, and it was the place where people went to find shelter from the many tornadoes that blew through the Topeka Kansas area. The people were scrambling, and running towards the shelter, for they remembered the tornado of June of 1966, when Topeka was famously struck by a devastating F5 tornado, that carved a 22 mile path through the city, damaged the state capital and Washburn University. The residents of Topeka will never forget that tornado.

However, this was a little bit different. As the residents climbed down the stairs to the tornado shelter, they started to feel something different. They noticed the sky and an intense blinding flash of light, followed by a rapidly expanding fireball and a towering distinctive cloud, made of smoke, debris and condensed water vapor that forms after a massive explosion or release of heat. It forms a "mushroom cloud" because it resembles a mushroom in shape and form.

Yes, it was very different, It started with a superheated bubble of gas and air called a fireball, and because hot air is much lighter than the cool air around its the fireball shoots upwardly like a hot air balloon.

As the fireball rises, it creates a vacuum underneath it, pulling up a strong updraft of smoke, dust, and dirt, that forms that forms the narrow stem of the mushroom.

As the hot gas reaches higher, cooler layers of the atmosphere its ascent slows down,

No It Was Something Different.

It Was An Atomic Bomb-

A mushroom cloud is one of the iconic examples of a Atomic Bomb.

Why would anyone want to bomb Topeka Kansas? Everyone tried their phone, but it was blank, and it had no reception. The Cell Tower was down, and people could scroll no more. The question was - Why would they want to bomb Topeka Kansas? The questions were mounting up.

That is anyone's guess. Perhaps they had a conscience, and they had to sit, in the shelter for at least two weeks, to let the radiation go away. Good thing it was well stocked and one lady had a cassette tape player, so they could listen to a bit of music. You don't have to have a reception to play a tape player, or an IPOD, and then you had to play games that you used to play games like charades, and rumor has it they played tic tac toe on the walls of the shelter.

And Most of All they Had Good Conversation- They told stories about their children, and about past tornado's, and basically had fun.

In this day and age of the internet, something that isn't done anymore.