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| Hurricane watch, Atlantic Seaboard. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife) |
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| tornado watch (Photo credit: BellaLago) |
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| Tornado warning (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
When I was about 10 years old I once hurried home from a long way, almost downtown. Someone had forgotten to pick me up from church at night, but I'd waited thinking they were just late. I let ride offers pass me by.
Finally, before the church closed down (didn't think to look for someone and ask for a ride!), I set off on foot. It was raining so hard I could barely do more than hug myself and hold my head down. There were many, many neighborhood blocks to go. In the fast, pounding rain (I hope this seems as brave and dramatic as possible), I heard crashing thunder, and saw jagged flashes of lightning. (I really did!) They did their drama on, over, and around me. Eventually, I felt so sopping wet and shivery that I took shelter on a house porch about a block from home. I knocked on the front door of some sisters who were friends of my mother, who let me in quickly, although probably astonished by the sight of me. I had not even had a sweater to put over myself. Poor thing. I felt so proud, later of course, having been through such an adventure.
I report this now to make the point that what is "bad weather" to me has to be scarier than hard rain accompanied by sparks and loud noises. These days news people love to get excited about "bad weather," and
that can lead to some funny outcomes and exaggerations. For example, did you ever see the network reporter supposedly broadcasting in little boat on a terribly flooded land location? She was actually reporting live when someone's black rubber boots went walking by in the foreground, between the broadcasting camera and the journalist. Her boat had to have been resting on a road or on land hit by no deeper than a rowboat exterior-bottom of water. I hope she took the teasing well. The shock on her face, when she realized what had happened, truly spoke more than a thousand words.
However, bad weather warnings for tornado watches are not to be ignored, nor is a storm warning. And there is a real storm warning, actually a tornado warning, in my county right now. As I write. We are not sure that we should believe the news, but the Weather Channel got our attention, and we will not stay on the upper level of the house. We've moved to the lower level of the house and have flashlights at the ready...well, downstairs when we're not running upstairs to get a book or a blanket, in case.
I'll update later, but for now things seem fine here in the basement with the laptop, the news, flashlights, and supper in the oven upstairs. It'll be ready in a few minutes if the electricity holds out.
Update: Crisis passed almost uneventfully last night. Electricity left us for a little while, enough time for playing shadow figures on the ceiling with flashlights and fingers, to tell a few jokes with hazy punchlines, one short story, and then...Lights on. Today is gorgeously sunny.
(c) 2012
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