It's That Nervous Time Of Year Again

Time for schizophrenic weather that starts out sunny and pleasant and turns deadly ugly in  what feels like an instant.  Oklahoma in the Springtime.  Beautiful, and can be extremely terrifying. 
It's the time of year when we check the batteries in all the flashlights & the weather radios, update the documents stored on our SURVIVOR flash drives, clean out our hidey-holes, and keep a wary eye on the horizon.
No severe weather in the offing today, but there are some spectacular clouds out there.  Sun keeps coming and going.  The sky to the East of us right now is ugly gunmetal gray.  Looks like points East are getting stormed on.  We have had thunder in the last few minutes. 

I am a California girl.  I grew up keeping a pair of hard soled slip on shoes under my bed where I could grab them and put them on quickly in case of earthquake.  I had a sturdy desk (I still have it!) that I could hide under so as not to be hit by falling debris.  I wish it were that easy to ride out a tornado.  Tornadoes are worse because of all the weather forecaster drama that goes on before they even show up.  Trying to figure out where they are going is nerve wracking.  Earthquakes just show up.  No advance drama.  They're just THERE.

Tornadoes require crawling into the smallest, most reinforced space in your house, or a shelter, if you are lucky enough to have come up with enough money to get one.  I do NOT want to go underground.  Sorry.  Too many geology classes and too much claustrophobia.  The closet is bad enough.  I really hate it, and I put off getting in there until the absolute last second. I throw all the stuff in there and we sort of sit on it/ hang onto it.  (I sit on the firesafe lockbox that has all our ppw in it.  I also plan to scan the most important papers and put them on the flash drive.) I don't take all the clothes out of the closet, figuring that all that cloth could be good protection.  (Except my shoes will likely fall on our heads.)

The closet is heavily reinforced with prayer, and I do believe in the power of prayer.  I also have my tablet computer, and my phone and keep track of the storm as long as the wifi lasts.  Also keep in touch with my friends all over the world.  That's what I did last year. My friends kept asking for updates, and that kept me sane. Matt was still at work, so I was in that closet all alone except for my online friends. 

 I was really upset last year because on May 20th, I had just grocery shopped.  A month's worth of groceries had just been put away when the warning hit.  I was just SURE the tornado would come and wipe out the house just because I had just put the groceries away.  Fortunately, that did not happen.  Tornado went around us and farther south.  In 99 it went north of us.  On May 31st, it also went north AND one went south of us.  Yes, prayer works. 

The whole town is a bit twitchy this time of year, especially as it has been less than a year since our last tango with tornadoes here in Moore.  Everybody watches the skies on days like this, and listens for the weather warning alarms.  Most of us at the library will have the weather radar up on our computers. I have a warning alarm app on my phone, we have portable weather radios in the house, we also have walkie talkies in case the cell service goes out.  (Have those at each desk in the library as well.)

So, here we are facing another storm season.  I guess I am about as nervous as the rest of the folks in town.  We will just pray that there will be at least 10 years with no big tornadoes.  May all the fierce storms stay out in the uninhabited areas where nobody will get hurt.  Please.