Saturday, August 14, 2010

Grab Toto and Head for the Cellar

Yesterday was sleep late day after my late night meteor watching excursion with Neighbor Betty. In addition to some pretty cool meteors we saw something strange and as yet unexplained. More about that later.

It was another stinking hot day. The problem is that around here a string of hot days does not bode well for us. It means that some nasty thunderstorms will soon follow.

Last night about 6:30 p.m. the wind picked up and storm blew in at an incredible speed. The large maple tree outside our little home office was bending and the leaves were being whipped into a frenzy.

It's at this point that we go into readiness. Our standard response is to gather up the pets and prepare ourselves to head into the basement at a moment's notice. Last night The Farmer headed upstairs to find the cat. When he looking into my sewing room he saw that the force of the wind had knocked the bottom window clean out of the frame! It was sitting in the middle of the floor and rain was pouring in. He quickly put the window back into the frame and locked it tight. Unfortunately, he was unable to locate the cat who had found one of his hiding spots.

When he returned back downstairs he looked out the window and sounded the alarm, "In the basement, NOW!!"

Outside there were two clouds that seemed to collide and were sent spinning. A portion of the bottom began to dip to the ground. Fascinating as it is, that spells possible danger. We grabbed up the Chihuahua's and yelled for the Other Mother to come quick.

She said, "Oh, I've just got a couple more dinner dishes to wash."

"No, you don't. Downstairs NOW!"

We sat in the cool basement while the storm passed overhead. A tornado never did fully develop and for that we are glad. It's never a dull moment in the midwest.

And, sorry, no pictures. I'm sure that your imagination can whip up something dangerous and colorful. Right?

10 comments:

Becky K. said...

That is so scary. Tornadoes are so very powerful...glad you are o.k.

Becky K.

Ang. said...

We had the same weather here. No tornadoes came of it either. Thankfully! There are lots of sticks in the yard this morning and the lawn chairs are blown around. Hot humid weather for days on end is never a good sign. Glad you are all okay! :)

betseysumners said...

ahh, time in the basement...Hope your basement is nicer than mine! Glad you are safe and sound. We are looking forward to the rain from the storms that hit you, suppose to be just rain though.

Barbara said...

That is scary, I know as a kid growing up in Michigan we used to head for the basement when tornadoes were circling round, honestly now I do not have a clue what to do, or where I would go, I live in the deep South and nothing but creeks to jump in I gues, I know the clouds were really bad here yesterday, dark and lots of tails hanging from them. No tornado warnings though. It was ripe for them to form indeed.
Have a good day, Barbara

Anonymous said...

Yikes!! Glad you were safe & had a good watch out to the sky. We didn't get that part of it but more.rain. We've really had enough up here in the north. :)

Hope you didn't have too much to clean up from the rain coming in the blown-out window.

Vee said...

The Other Mother likes to flirt with danger now, doesn't she? Glad that all is well. Glad that the window had blown in as that probably was a real good indication to your hubby that all was not well. Hope that the cat is okay!

myletterstoemily said...

dorothy! so glad you're safe and
sound.

you presented the story so well and
so aptly. we are just like that.

strangely, we have not had one this
summer.

Jody Blue said...

I love a good storm...but not that wild, glad all is well in the land of oz:)

Steph said...

We have had 3-4 weeks of 100+ temps and hardly any rain, but yesterday we had a pretty good thunderstorm. I was looking out my back window and I bet there were 15 lightning strikes near our chicken houses in 5 seconds. I swear it looked like it was hitting them. I called Lance to tell him that we were under a severe thunderstorm warning and we might need to go check the chickens, when he said that a neighbor of ours had called and said there was a fire at the chicken houses, so I immediately think lightning strike. Well we race up there and luckily it was not the chicken houses on fire. It was the edge of the cotton field on fire though. We had to put it out with hoes and shovels really quickly because cotton catches fire fast! Turns out that we had burned some stuff up there early that morning, and the wind had gotten up so bad that it blew some ashes (the fire had been out probably 8 hours by then) across the road and into our field. We were lucky our neighbor drove by and saw it!

Renae said...

Wow- that sounds... terrifying!
The Wizard of Oz has made me eternally scared of tornadoes!

Glad you're ok!