Tales From The Midwest - Tornado!
It's pouring buckets at my house right now. The rain is accompanied by lots of lightning and very loud thunder. It flashed me back to my last night in Iowa so I thought I would tell the tale. It's out of sequence from the rest of the stories but I'm sure you can live with that.
I was set to fly out of Des Moines on Monday afternoon so it was one more night at Dawnie's before I left. Dawnie, Zoey and I met Lisa at Old Chicago for dinner on Sunday night. It was good to see Lisa. She hadn't gone to Wisconsin with us this year and she missed the Thursday night "Welcome to Ms. Kathy" party so it was my one shot to spend some time with her.
Dinner was good but it was all I could do to put down two beers. I was so frakking tired from the weekend and my liver was in rebellion. We headed back to Dawnie's and it was an early night for us all. We needed it.
I was sleeping in the downstairs bedroom and I woke up to hear some heavy rain coming down. It was pretty strong sounding but soothing. I was in that twilight zone of sleep where you're not quite aware of your surroundings and I heard a whistle. Since I live near train tracks now, I assumed it was a train somewhere even though I hadn't seen any tracks. It didn't seem to be going anywhere, though.
Next thing I knew, Dawnie was at the door with Zoey and Lisa saying, "Wake up honey, the tornado siren's going off and we need to go." Well, that's a new one for me.
The place we were going was a back room in their basement that had no windows but fortunately had carpet. The electricity was out so we were seeing by the light of our cell phones. Zoey and Lucy curled up on a blanket while Dawnie called Lisa.
Lisa's the tornado woman. She has the weather radio dialed in and will stay up all night monitoring storms. After the floods they got this summer, I can't say that I blame her. She gave us the scoop on what was being reported and there wasn't an actual tornado but there were tornado strength winds being reported. Like 90mph +.
I should mention it was about 4 AM.
We hung out a bit after the sirens stopped before deciding it was safe to return to our beds. Poor Zoey was so zonked out. She tried to carry Lucy up the stairs but could barely get herself up them. The rain was still coming down but I was so exhausted I couldn't even worry about the wind and I was out like the proverbial light.
Dawnie went to work the next morning and Tyson picked up Zoey so I got up to a nearly empty house (Lucy was there). The electricity was still out. I read for a while and waited for it to come back on. It briefly did then was out again. I took a chance that there was enough hot water left for a quick shower and it was clearly going to be a bad hair day since I couldn't dry nor straighten.
I called Dawnie and she told me about the wind speed and also to look out her back windows. A tree back there had snapped in half but fortunately didn't hit anything when it fell. Considering the tree originally was higher than her two story house, that's pretty lucky.
I was set to fly out of Des Moines on Monday afternoon so it was one more night at Dawnie's before I left. Dawnie, Zoey and I met Lisa at Old Chicago for dinner on Sunday night. It was good to see Lisa. She hadn't gone to Wisconsin with us this year and she missed the Thursday night "Welcome to Ms. Kathy" party so it was my one shot to spend some time with her.
Dinner was good but it was all I could do to put down two beers. I was so frakking tired from the weekend and my liver was in rebellion. We headed back to Dawnie's and it was an early night for us all. We needed it.
I was sleeping in the downstairs bedroom and I woke up to hear some heavy rain coming down. It was pretty strong sounding but soothing. I was in that twilight zone of sleep where you're not quite aware of your surroundings and I heard a whistle. Since I live near train tracks now, I assumed it was a train somewhere even though I hadn't seen any tracks. It didn't seem to be going anywhere, though.
Next thing I knew, Dawnie was at the door with Zoey and Lisa saying, "Wake up honey, the tornado siren's going off and we need to go." Well, that's a new one for me.
The place we were going was a back room in their basement that had no windows but fortunately had carpet. The electricity was out so we were seeing by the light of our cell phones. Zoey and Lucy curled up on a blanket while Dawnie called Lisa.
Lisa's the tornado woman. She has the weather radio dialed in and will stay up all night monitoring storms. After the floods they got this summer, I can't say that I blame her. She gave us the scoop on what was being reported and there wasn't an actual tornado but there were tornado strength winds being reported. Like 90mph +.
I should mention it was about 4 AM.
We hung out a bit after the sirens stopped before deciding it was safe to return to our beds. Poor Zoey was so zonked out. She tried to carry Lucy up the stairs but could barely get herself up them. The rain was still coming down but I was so exhausted I couldn't even worry about the wind and I was out like the proverbial light.
Dawnie went to work the next morning and Tyson picked up Zoey so I got up to a nearly empty house (Lucy was there). The electricity was still out. I read for a while and waited for it to come back on. It briefly did then was out again. I took a chance that there was enough hot water left for a quick shower and it was clearly going to be a bad hair day since I couldn't dry nor straighten.
I called Dawnie and she told me about the wind speed and also to look out her back windows. A tree back there had snapped in half but fortunately didn't hit anything when it fell. Considering the tree originally was higher than her two story house, that's pretty lucky.
This snap had to have been at least 30 feet off the ground.
Just as I was leaving to meet Dawnie for lunch before going to the airport, the electricity came back on. That's my luck. I didn't have time to primp at all. We went for Mexican food for lunch and I drove back to the airport. I stopped in at the restroom before checking in and saw my hair. My ball cap came instantly out of the luggage for the trip home.
