In 2007 I was visiting New York City. It wasn’t my first visit – I had been to this wild, urban place once before for a choir trip. However that trip had been so coordinated and regimented I almost don’t count it. This time – in 2007 that is – I really felt the city and all its splendid options and dysfunctions.

For one week I toured about, walked my feet practically to the bone, and learned how to successfully navigate the subway system on my own (personal victory!). Then, on my last day there, we decided to go see the Atlantic Ocean. As I was staying in Brooklyn with a friend, this excursion was no small feat. It involved several subway transfers along many lines, and we estimated the total transit time would take well over an hour. To be sure we’d get back in a timely manner so I could make my flight that evening, and because we hoped to catch the sunrise, we left the house at 4 a.m.

When we woke that morning, light drizzling rain greeted us. “It’s sure to let up,” we thought, so I plopped a hat upon my head, and we kept to the plan.

By the time we reached the beach quite some time later, the rain hadn’t let up at all. In fact, it had gotten worse. “But no matter,” we decided, and made the hike from the last subway station to the beach. It took approximately 15 seconds for our clothes to be soaked through, but we made it to the ocean.

I put my foot in, not bothering to remove the already saturated shoe. Then I put a hand in. It was chilly, frenzied by the storm. The wind was getting stronger, the rain defiantly fell harder, and then lightening started flashing among the clouds. With the first clap of thunder we instantly decided to retreat. The best laid plans, you know. No sense it risking electrocution.

We made it back to the subway, and along a few stops on that first line, and then havoc took over. Everything shut down. Due to flooding the subway couldn’t operate. So we attempted to catch a bus. But buses were overloaded with what would be subway traffic on any typical day. So we walked.

Hours and hours later, we finally made it back to the house. Exhausted, worn thin, still damp. It was only later, after we trudged up the stairs to the apartment, that we found out what had caused such a severe storm.

A tornado. The first tornado to hit Brooklyn since 1950. (New York Times story here.) I had no idea New York even got tornadoes. It just figured that my visit would be marked by such a rare occasion. But it made for a good story, we weren’t too worse for the wear. No harm, no foul.

And then it happened again.

On Thursday, Sept. 16, 2010, my first night in New York on this particular visit, another tornado hit New York. (New York Times story for this twister here.)

Again, I had no idea what exactly had happened at the time, but knew something was wrong when my transportation plans were interrupted once more and angry New York commuters jostled around Penn Station in midtown Manhattan, stranded due to incapacitated train tracks. Luckily this time I didn’t have to walk all the way back into Brooklyn.

I made it to my friends’ musical premiere an hour and half late. Brief murmurs of a tornado striking Brooklyn filtered through passing comments, but it wasn’t until I got to my friends’ house that night that we saw the resulting debris. As we walked their two dogs along, we saw smashed cars, shredded trees, lots of police tape surrounding the worse damage. Intense destruction just blocks from their new apartment.

The moral of the story is, when I travel to New York, severe weather seems to follow. I thought my destructive nature was limited to petulant office equipment, but no. As I related this tale to my sister I told her I might have super powers. She said that wasn’t a very good super talent; what kind of a hero causes destruction?

Regardless, just go ahead and call me Dorothy.

This will be the first of a few posts dedicated to my recent trip to New York City. Don’t worry – the rest of them don’t involve natural disasters. Though there is a near scrape with basement flooding. Hey, it wasn’t my fault!