Comments & Curiosities:

Did one of you do something? Mother Nature was really mad. Whatever it was, she’s over it, for now, but it was quite a week. Plenty of rain, not quite up to the 1983 and 1992 El Niño standards, but impressive.

Tornado Tuesday was the big buzz, understandably. Twisters are not something we see here every day. When waterspouts popped up along the coast, one of them looked at Costa Mesa’s Westside and said, “Cool. Let’s try that.”

At least two twisters roughed up an industrial park, a mobile home park and a handful of businesses along West 17th Street — no injuries and mostly roof and sign damage, but a religious experience for those in the middle of it.

“All of a sudden it sounded like there was a herd of elephants stampeding on the roof,” Xavier Kohan, a financial consultant with an office in Ocean View Industrial Park, told the Daily Pilot on Tuesday. “I looked out the window and just saw huge pieces of the roof flying away. I’ve never seen anything like it. The pieces were just hanging in the air, swirling.”

At the Newport Pier, the winds were surging past 50 mph with gusts of up to 93 mph, which is officially, certifiably windy. It’s hard to appreciate what winds at those speeds are like if you haven’t experienced them first-hand.

You know those scenes on the news of the Santa Ana winds in Ontario or the Cajon Pass, where reporters have to hang on to something for dear life and they have hair like Gumby?

That’s a wind of about 60 or 70 miles an hour. If you’ve ever been in a 100 mph wind — I have and once was enough, thank you — you won’t forget it.

Few people have felt a 150 mph wind directly and lived to tell about it, and keep in mind that the strongest tornadoes produce winds of over 200 mph. No wonder Toto was so wired all the time. Of course, there are tornadoes and there are tornadoes.

I’m sure people in Kansas or Oklahoma or the Texas panhandle would laugh themselves silly to see what we were all pumped up about on Tuesday. The monsters they live with can be a half-mile wide, thousands of feet high and leave a path of carnage two and a half miles wide in their wake.

The twister that people in the Midwest still talk about is the Tri-State tornado that touched down on March 18, 1925. It marched 219 miles across Missouri, southern Illinois and Indiana in about three hours, which means it was moving at about 70 mph. By the time it was done, it took 750 lives.

When a black funnel cloud with 200 mph winds that stretches across the horizon is devouring everything in its path and bearing down on you at 70 mph and sounding like 100 freight trains — it gets your attention.

Extreme weather may be scary but it’s always interesting. Know what the highest temperature ever recorded was? It was in Al’Aziziyah, Libya, not a clue where that is, on Sept. 13, 1922 — 136 degrees, which is warm. And sunscreen is a must.

In the U.S.? This won’t be hard. Death Valley, July 10, 1913 — 134 degrees.

Coldest temperatures? We got those. Coldest air temperature ever recorded, July 21, 1983, in Vostok Station in Russia — minus 129 degrees. Imagine what it would have been in winter.

In the U.S.? Jan. 23, 1971, at Prospect Creek, Alaska — minus 80 degrees. That’s brisk.

Biggest hailstone ever measured? Two and a quarter pounds, in Bangladesh, April 14, 1986. Doesn’t that hurt?

If snow is your thing, the most snow to fall in one year was Mount Rainier in Washington — 31.1 meters between February 1971 and February 1972. That’s about 1,224 inches of snow, which is deep.

This one is hard to believe. The largest snowflake on record supposedly fell in Fort Keough, Mont., on Jan. 28, 1887, at 38 centimeters across, which is about 15 inches.

Really? How did that work exactly? A single, 15-inch snowflake lands, and not only doesn’t disappear immediately, but lasts long enough for someone to race inside and grab a measuring tape. I guess you had to be there.

Speaking of being there, had you been on an island in the Indian Ocean called La Reunion on Aug. 1, 1966, you would have seen the most rain ever in 24 hours — 72 inches during tropical cyclone Denise. Geez, Denise, lighten up.

I think that’s it then. True, tornadoes in Costa Mesa are a little weird. But compared with two-pound hailstones, 15-inch snowflakes and minus 129 degrees in July, not so much. It’s all a matter of perspective. You can stash those umbrellas, for now. I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at ptrb4@aol.com.