Stormy Weather

We had what some might consider to be an exciting weekend in the Midwest. It is, though, the kind of excitement I prefer to not have all the time! Saturday was a calm day – I just cleaned the house, did laundry, and those “fun” routine chores. Sunday started out nice – just a quiet morning with a pot of ham and beans simmering on the stove.

After lunch, we turned on the Royals' game on TV and were relaxing. I was stretched out in the recliner and hubby was on the sofa. I was just dropping off to sleep with the tornado sirens went off. It's amazing how, even at this age, I can still jump into quick action at that sound!. I was up and out of the recliner, heading to the bedroom to find my shoes with my cellphone in hand before I really had both eyes open. Hubby was right behind me, looking for his long pants and shoes. We got that accomplished and headed out the door.

We're fortunate that we really don't have nasty weather all the time – really it's only once every few years on the average. I did, though, feel pretty safe. We headed down the staircase just outside our door to the ground floor, leaving the elevator for those in wheelchairs and walkers. On the first floor there's an interior hallway where everyone gathers to wait out the storm. Several had brought battery-powered radios, so we could listen to the weather reports. We were down there about half an hour before we got the all-clear – and in the meantime there had been very hard rain, blowing winds, and hail. There were some trees and tree limbs down around down, but not disastrously bad damage. One of my favorite houses in town did have a tree come down on it.

The rest of our day was quiet, a lot of listening to the scanner as law enforcement reported on damage around the county. But I never got unwound enough to go back to my nap.

I remember well my 7^th grade year of school when we had the tornado siren go off on a lovely spring afternoon while my school was hosting a track meet. The junior high and high school were all outside watching the three-way meet when the sirens went off – and we all looked to the west and could actually see a distinct funnel cloud. That was a really active weather year, and we'd just had tornado drills. So we all knew to head across the street to the Baptist Church basement. Once they knew the danger was past, they loaded us on our buses to head home. My bus ended up pulling to the side of the road for a few minutes as another front moved through. I was really glad to get home that day and see everything safe and sound.

We so often ended up going to the storm cellar in the middle of the night. I hated those times of being woke up and dragged out of my nice comfy bed to run out into the rain, around the side of the house and into the cool cellar – we couldn't take the most direct route to the cellar because of how the power lines came into the house. There was a storm drain in the cellar, but it inevitably wouldn't work when the barometric pressure changed so quickly during a storm. One or two dogs I had (they don't always last too long in the country) were spooked by storms and would run through that cold standing water in the cellar and jump into my lap.

One night after the rain and wind quit, Dad opened the cellar door a bit to check on the weather, then quickly called Mom and me to join him. The clouds were passing, the moon came out bright, and very high in the sky was a perfectly-shaped little funnel cloud that drifted along and drifted apart as we watched, ending up as a few innocent fluffy clouds. I was fascinated by that.

One spring evening when Dad and I were watching the weather on TV, we had a storm come through. I wanted to go to the cellar and Dad was more than happy to go with me. Mom refused, she was in the middle of washing dishes. Later she admitted that a gust of wind had rocked that corner room where she was standing.

She evacuated with us yesterday – if only she'd thought to put on some shoes first.