Spring of the Twister

Wow! What a day so far.

And what is up with this weather? It's just downright scary. Poor Joplin is gone. All those lives. All those memories. It's just sad.

And then today, I knew it was supposed to storm. But who knew it would turn so quick. I was sitting at my desk and I noticed how dark it was getting, so naturally I looked at the radar. I wanted to see what was about to hit us. As soon as I brought up the page (NOAA) I saw that we were under a tornado watch and to my surprise a tornado warning.

I thought it was a mistake. There was nothing happening so I didn't understand what was happening. The church I work in also has an early learning center and they weren't doing anything. I mentioned the tornado warning to the administrative assistant of the learning center. And just as we did, we noticed the director (who is about to leave in a couple weeks) come running in. The storm is at 169, not far from where we are. A group of extra free hands run to the 6 week room to get the little ones downstairs. I close up the church part and get downstairs. They get all the kids into the bathrooms and close the doors. I listened to the weather radio and they just kept repeating themselves. But news reports we were getting from phones and people were that there were reports of one near 151st and Roe and a UPS man told us about one near 132rd and Metcalf. Basically they were dancing around us. Luckily there was nothing. We were down there for about 45 minutes or so to wait out the storm. By the time we walked upstairs, the sun was out and shining. Of course right before I left a huge downpour started and it's clouded back up again.

The weather this year is insane. It's been so up and down. There are crazy storms hitting everywhere and changing lives. Rob and I have been talking about it and where we would go if a storm hit while we were home. We are on the second floor of our apartments, not the top but certainly not the bottom. The closest we have to a basement is the laundry room, but if it came out of no where when where do we go if we can't get there. Storms tend to come in the middle of the night when you least expect it, so we wanted to be prepared. We decided on the master bedroom closet. No windows (clearly) and it is the most inside room in this apartment with no outside walls at all. I think it's a good idea to know the plan ahead of time (for the very duh reason) but also because if something did hit and only one of us was here and something happened to this building then we would know where to look. Scary and horrible to say but it's true. Reality is hard and sometimes you have to face it, especially with all this horrible storms that are bouncing around us.

So I guess this is the part where I wish luck to all my readers out there. I hope that nothing like Joplin hits anywhere else this spring.