The Southeast is being punished for twice electing George Bush, Jr. to the presidency.

As weekend watchers of CNN already know, the Georgia area has been swarmed with tornadoes this weekend. Last night the CNN Center had not only external damage but also internal from the storms. Windows were blown out of the Omni International Hotel and furniture was thrown to the ground below. A hole popped in the roof the Georgia Dome while a waterfall poured down a staircase at the Atlanta Civic Center. It hasn't stopped. As I type (Saturday 2:51 p.m.) the local TV news is still advising one county after another to take cover immediately.

Growing up I saw tornadoes on TV and heard the warnings, but tornadoes didn't seem real to me. You had to live out in Wizard of Oz country to experience a real threat, I always thought. The only exception was once in 12th grade we spent what seemed a laughable amount of time duck-and-covered in the high school halls. When we were finally allowed to rise, the visitors bleachers were a jumble in the middle of the football field. Hmm...maybe these tornado things were real after all!

Despite a lackadaisical attitude toward the weather in my youth, I've grown full-on paranoid in recent months. This is due to waking up in the middle of the night in December to hear hail splashing my window as the trees did the twist outside. I ran to the living room TV, and WSB's graphics weren't making it very clear whether this was a tornado situation or just storms (now I know: yellow rotating circles are storms, red rotating circles are tornadoes). I sat down in the recliner to suddenly hear the freight train sound always described by Midwestern tornado victims. It does sound like a freight train, and one just feet away from your front porch. You hear that sound and realize the brick structure that you've known for decades could be turned to rubble in one second.

Fortunately I must've been on the far edge of the twister, because the neighborhood got by with nothing but some overturned garbage cans and a few limbs on the street. The weatherman pointed out, "We're experiencing springtime storms in December." What global warming?

Then just a month ago there were overcast skies on a Sunday, but no mention of even lightning, let along tornadoes on the news. So I headed to the post office to drop off some bills with a thought to stopping in Wal-Mart on the way back. Out of nowhere there was a downpour so intense I could not see more than five feet in front of me. The trees and powerlines were wobbling to-and-afro. I turned on WSB-AM to see what was going on. "If you are in a car, get into a ditch. If you are in a mobile home, leave it immediately." Now?! There wasn't a ditch anywhere around! There was an auto parts store ahead, but the rain was so thick I couldn't see if their lights were on. Home was less than a mile away, so I burned northward. I swear the Corolla lifted off the ground for a second, but maybe I just hydroplaned on the riptide rolling down the hill.

Since that there was another 4 a.m. Monday morning wake-up and rush to the basement. That one resulted in $10 million in damage across the lower part of the county.

So last night I was rolling home from work, and the darkening clouds and lightning had me gripping the steering wheel white-knuckled. Since getting a taste of the freight train sound I can't look at a rain cloud the same. Traffic was inching along as nature's light show went off like strobes. There wasn't even a breeze outside but I just knew this was no ordinary springtime storm. The wait at the red light at the top off the hill has never seemed so long.

But of course it settled about as fast as I got indoors. What a wuss I was, huh? Thirty minutes later that same storm knocked over brick buildings and felled 37 utility poles in downtown Atlanta. I knew my instincts were good.

And again today, the sirens that sound like "Luke's Wall" from Black Sabbath's Paranoid album wafted through the air, and there were more trips to the basement.

Georgia is really starting to suck.