Stormy weather

If you've read my posts before, you would assume the title for this post is alluding to my tornadic-whirlwind-crazy-freaking life but, actually, I'm writing about the lovely storm that blew through last night.

I swear I have a super power to sense when a storm hits. I was in the middle of an annoying dream when I was bolted awake by the sound of wind screaming over the house. Not the best sound to wake up to in an area prone to tornadoes. After breaking through the thick fog of sleep encompassing my exhausted husband's brain (it was 3:45 a.m.), I convinced him we needed to get the babies up and that we all needed to get in the closet - our designated tornado "shelter". The TV, showing the angry red and purple storm on Doppler, was on full blast and we buzzed around the house snatching warm, sleepy babies from their comfy beds and rushed them to the closet. As I ran around the house, I caught snippets of the weather report: tornado warning in dallas and collin county. Joy. Winds in excess of 60-70 mph. Yippee.

My instincts have been honed after years of being scared poopless (such a mom) when storms came our way. Most of the time my concern is unwarranted but I don't feel I can risk being complacent when I have my babes to look after. Despite the chuckles from those who are unconcerned, I continue to wake up when storms blow threw. At the least, I quickly check the weather. If it's bad enough, I sit up and watch the weather until the threat has past. If it's really bad, I haul everyone out of bed until it's all fine (I only do this if there is a tornado warning which means a tornado has been spotted or has formed.)

My respect for tornadoes was established by two impressive events: a tornado hit my middle school when I was a kid, and, as a college student, I volunteered at a clean up for the town of Jarrell after a huge tornado tore through the town and killed several people. The tornado that hit my school was not a big deal and it only knocked some bricks off of one side of the building but, although I couldn't see it, we all felt the power of it as it shook the entire building as it went by. Volunteering at Jarrell was completely different. I was fortunate to be in Austin and far away from the tornado when it went by but the poor people of Jarrell were in its path. Having seen the affects of tornadoes for years, I was stunned into silence after exiting the school bus that took us to the fields - empty fields where houses used to be. The openness and silence was chilling. The land still had the energy of the category 5 tornado in the air which made the hairs of my arms stand on end. Finding the rotting carcasses of cattle in the field of tall grass provided a visual and olfactory understanding of the violence of the storm.

So, after gathering all the kiddos up and piling into the closet, I worked to pretend that the storm was no big deal. My oldest is very intuitive and had already clued into the fact that this storm was different. When I came to get him out of his room, he said to me that he was scared and that the storm was really fast. How did he know? Maybe he has acquired my super power as well. Anyway, so as we huddled together, Mom, Dad, Neil, Evan and Dylan, we had a "closet party" as we waited for the "grumpy" storm to go by. When it had past and it was time to return to our beds, thankful that we were ok, I took Neil to his room and we waved the storm bye-bye. He was very brave and didn't insist on sleeping with us even though he did seem to want to. The tuckered little twins fell back to sleep pretty quickly. Since it was almost 5:00 a.m. by this time, Chris got up and started getting ready for work, and I, relaxed once again, and fell promptly to sleep.

Waking up this morning, I felt pretty good because we managed to handle the potentially stressful situation pretty well and we didn't have any significant damage from the storm with the exception of two sections of our fence knocked over. Although I'm sure Neil was a little nervous about the storm last night, we joked about happy and grumpy storms this morning so I'm hoping that he won't be in a panic the next time we have a closet party. Of course, he did want to have one today even though the skies are relatively clear and it's not raining.

I haven't had a chance to see how the rest of the metroplex handled the storm. I heard there were some cars on houses a bit west of us and that there are large chunks of trees missing around the neighborhood. At least it seems like we all survived the storm relatively unscathed and we can relax until the next line of storms comes blowing through here.