“Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore”

We all recognize this line from The Wizard of Oz, after Dorothy gets blown away by the tornado into the wonderful world of Oz. Well after a similarly disastrous storm here in Dallas on Tuesday, I know I'm sure as hell not in England anymore.

Dallas, it seems, is slap-bang in the middle of tornado country, and right now, it’s twister season! Until this point, I’ve had many, many, Dallasites tell me just how crazy the weather gets here but when they spoke of hail stones the size of golf balls, and tornadoes blowing through the city, I thought these were perhaps occurrences that had happened in Dallas’ history, but not actually a regular annual thing. You know, like when the weather man tells us we're going to have an Indian summer in England – we laugh because we know it’s not true! Well that was my attitude towards storms and hail and tornadoes; I’m sure they could happen but it doesn’t mean they will.

Well Dallas, I’m very sorry for doubting you.

This should be an ad for safety glass - look at the size of those hail stone holes, and his windscreen didn't even shatter!

Yes, that is a lorry in the air there

I think one of these, aimed correctly, could kill you

It was strange as between 1 and 2pm, I'd been sitting outside eating lunch on a patio at a restaurant, and it was a little rainy, but we were oblivious! I heard a few sirens (imagine air raid/blitz type noises) but I'd heard them before, and dismissed it. Then we got back to the office and I see I've got texts from people in Albuquerque saying they'd seen the news and was I OK; everyone at work was standing at the windows looking out and talking about the tornadoes that had already hit certain areas, and I'd just been eating lunch on a patio! That's how sudden these things happen.It was madness. By 2.30pm, the sky was so dark it looked like night. My office is on the 7th floor, and as Dallas is so flat, you can normally see for miles, but the clouds had closed in so much we could barely see further than a block.

As the storm came in

Moments later, and the buildings have disappeared under the fog

The roads were flooded, it looked pretty apocalyptic out there, and for a while we thought we might be stuck at the office after hours (noooooo!) And then it was gone. Skies cleared up, no more rain, no more hail; the tornadoes blew away to bother other people (sorry about that guys) and life went on.

There are some really sad pictures of people's houses that have been destroyed. What's crazy is the aerial footage of the neighbourhoods that were hit shows some houses which have been destroyed and levelled to the ground, and the house next door is fully intact; perhaps the lawn ornaments have blown over, but they look pretty much untouched.

Today, apart from the pictures and tweets that are all over the internet, you would not know there had been a crazy storm yesterday. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the birds are singing in the few remaining trees... The area in the picture above, the dark one where the storm clouds were gathering, that's where I live. Today it looks like this:

It's like nothing happened

Hockey

On Sunday I went to a Dallas Stars NHL (National Hockey League) game with Ian and his friend Ross (and Ross’ baby Liam too, if we’re getting technical about the guest list). I’d never been to a hockey game before, I guess Albuquerque either doesn’t have a team or I was never aware of one if it does. (OK I just googled ‘NHL New Mexico’ and it came up with a list of National Historic Landmarks so I think that pretty much confirms the lack of ice hockey in NM!) So anyway, I’d never been to a hockey game, and in fact my only knowledge of ice hockey comes from watching Mighty Ducks when I was younger, so I was very excited for a new experience. And I really enjoyed myself!

Granted, some of my excitement stemmed not so much from the sport, but from the fact that we watched the game from a private box, which belongs to Ross’ company. That was pretty cool. We got to go through the Platinum entrance, we were in our own room, we had comfy seats and weren’t just one of the crowd – we made our own crowd! We got a great view of the rink (?) - not sure if that’s correct NHL terminology but let’s go with it – and were about mid-level height so could see enough of the game without relying heavily on the big screens.

I think one of the reasons I enjoyed the game so much is that it’s much more fast-paced than most sports. American football is slow to the point of watching paint dry (yes maybe you did just run the length of the field, but why are you now stopping for a ten minute coffee break while some random men run out onto the pitch with a tape measure?); baseball - yawnsville; golf – even worse; real football is definitely more fast paced than the Yank version but the pitch is so huge that it still feels slow, as most of the action takes place in the middle and no-one cares about that part, just get inside the damn box and score already. It may just be that I have a very short attention span but hockey suited me very nicely. The rink (still unsure about this) was small enough that everything that happened seems to be full of action and excitement; the game isn’t separated in two but in threes, so you have two opportunities to get the beers in, between periods (official hockey vocab – they couldn’t exactly call it a game of three halves could they?!); and the scoring system was simple enough for my small brain i.e. one goal equals one point. This may sound like a stupid point to some people but in American football, basketball, rugby etc, there are all kinds of ways to score a differing amount of points depending on your techniques. I like it simple.

The arena where we saw the game is also a basketball court for the Dallas Mavericks. It switches between basketball court and ice hockey rink and apparently takes 8 hours to go from one to the other.

The Stars unfortunately lost 4-2 to the LA Kings but I think I’ve found a sport I actually enjoy watching!