Apocalypse Now?...

I don't know about the rest of you and what the weather is like where you live, but it's been crazy around South Carolina the past couple of months.  And from what I can tell on the news, across the rest of the country it's been pretty crazy too.  There have been record numbers of tornadoes, floods, winds, and storms pretty much everywhere.  I have lived the majority of my life in the Carolinas and until about a month ago, in the Carolinas I have never seen THIS.

I was out riding bikes with my family for about 20 minutes last night and stopped to talk to a neighbor.  In about 5 minutes, the sky got dark and the wind started howling, and we got the heck out of dodge if you know what I mean.  Ride like the wind I tell you...and the wind was blowing seriously fast.

I saw this picture last night that a friend linked on facebook of the storm here in town.  It was taken about 10 minutes from where I live.

Ummm.... now listen, I don't know a thing about tornadoes except what I've seen on Extreme Weather on the Weather Channel or on the movie "Terrible Tuesday" that I watched several times in school growing up, but isn't that sort of how tornadoes start?  And whether it is or not, I'd just like to say that I live in South Carolina because we don't have storms like people do out in places like Kansas and Oklahoma....and I like that about South Carolina.  But perhaps we do have storms sort of like that...actually, apparently we do.

Last week when I was in Montana there were storms in town with over 80 mph straight-line winds.  I'd never even heard of straight-line winds until a friend told me that they took out 17 trees in her yard and completely rearranged the furniture at her neighborhood pool.  Look what they did to my yard too.  I guess I'm lucky to just have one tree casualty....still, look where this thing fell. 

(Yes that is directly between the 2 play sets in my yard.  Um.... I'm a little uncomfortable with that.  And the fact that it was entirely uprooted.)

And then last night I also heard of a roof blowing directly off of a building into the middle of a major road.  This does not happen here.  Oh yeah, and when we were coming back from our trip the other night, there was a billboard at our exit that was bent into a 90 degree angle.  Just wrapped around the pole, like it was a piece of cardboard that someone flicked too hard.

All to say, it's weird.  And did you know that apparently one of Saturn's moons lost a ring recently too?  Yeah...random tidbit I learned from a friend who knows tidbits like that.  And I can't help but really wonder to myself...how do you know when it really is the "end times?"  I mean, the Bible says we won't know the exact date and time of Jesus' return, but it does say that things can get weirder beforehand.  I don't claim to know at all ya'll, but I do wonder.  And in the end, what I do know is that however weird and weathery it gets here, when He comes back...I for one am going with Him.

PS. For fear that you all begin think I'm some freaky end times theologian or something...I just want to say "stop right there.  I'm not."  Surely though, I'm not the only person wondering what in the world is going on with the world? And with the weather?