An Early Morning Wake Up Call

The bedroom was much too dark for 7:30 a.m., and the thunderstorm raging outside our bedroom window this morning just didn’t sound right. Half asleep from another late evening spent watching movies, I fumbled with the blinds as Jordan awoke from my writing chair across the room.

“What’s going on?” she asked immediately, sensing the difference in the atmosphere. “Is this a tornado?!”

The roar in our house was deafening, and I tried desperately to listen for tornado sirens to no avail. Pulling open the blinds, I was shocked to see a fierce wall of white rain bending our trees sideways in the wrong direction, southeast.

I scrambled for the remote to catch a glimpse of a weather report, then realized how stupid that was: I didn’t need a cable news network to confirm that we needed to move into the basement, NOW.

Jordan grabbed all the family pets and I ran down the hallway to wake Jamie, where I almost knocked Jim over walking out of the bathroom. “Basement, now,” I said, and Jim went directly to wake Jamie and bring him down the two flights of stairs.

I walked past the front windows before heading into the basement, and our twenty-five foot tree on our front lawn was bowing violently in the wind, and I jumped back as the top of the tree whipped against the second-story windows with raging force. White clouds scudded across the backdrop of black clouds and streaks of green and blue lightning, and I remember hearing myself say out loud “The tornado really is here.”

With flashes of Joplin destruction and death tolls in my mind, I ran down the basement stairs to find everyone crowded around the television, trying to made heads or tails of the weather map.

“Where is the tornado?” I asked Jim, noting the screen was only showing thunderstorm and flood warnings for all the surrounding counties.

Jim shook his head and continued to stare at the screen. “There isn’t one,” he said in disbelief. “I think there was some sort of microburst or something called a derecho. There is no tornado anywhere on the radar, but they’re clocking wind bursts of sixty miles an hour all over the place.”

“Have you seen our trees?” I asked nobody in particular. “They are sideways. The wind has not stopped blowing for the last fifteen minutes. We’re trapped in some sort of psycho vortex, and it sure as hell is stronger than sixty miles an hour.”

And as quickly as the storm descended, it was gone. Everyone, pets and all, climbed the stairs and ended up on the big bed for the next fifteen minutes, watching the morning news to verify that the worst part of the storm had past, yet we could still expect another thirty minutes of rain.

As we continued to watch the news then ventured out into the neighborhood, we realized how lucky we were: Our electricity stayed on, our windows and shingles remained intact, our patio furniture did not stray from our deck, and all seven trees survived the driving winds.

Yet only five houses down the block, our neighbor’s beautiful backyard tree snapped right in half, barely missing his bedroom window, and another mature tree on an island cul-de-sac blocked through-traffic for the day. Traffics lights were out everywhere, and even my husband’s doctor’s appointment was cancelled as the office was power-free for the day.

And yet tomorrow is another day, and if all goes as planned, we will clean up the stray twigs and remaining firecracker wrappers that litter the backyard, then head over to the pool to cool off.

Mother Nature just loves to keep us guessing, doesn't she?