Grey Clouds Roll Over the Hils

My family just got a crash course in emergency preparedness.  Because, hey, we weren't prepared!

Ever since we moved here, I have been having dreams, well, nightmares about tornados.  They always end up coming down the alley next to my house, and the basement is either locked or I am not quick enough getting the kids.  Yeah, I have them at least once a week.  So I had been telling Nick, hey, we should probably put stuff down in the storm cellar in case we need to spend some time down there.  We just never got around to it.

But, for good measure, I downloaded an ap on my phone that sends you alerts for severe weather in your area.  It wasn't the first time I had gotten a sever thunderstorm warning.  The last one was when we were in Ames shopping and the lightning was all over the place, and somewhat scary.  And it wasn't the first time we had gone out into the living room in the middle of the night to hide in a corner away from windows.  But there was something different Thursday night, because the storm didn't seem to ever move away.

I kept getting alert after alert, extending the warning time hour by hour.  Usually we don't have to get Tristan out of bed, we keep him away from the windows upstairs.  But I decided to just go get him and we'd hide in the pantry or something.  Nick stayed downstairs with Aramis, and when I got back down, there was a strike of lighting that lit up the entire living room like a whiteout, and one second later (no joke!) a boom so loud and heavy it turned on Tristan's musical toys.

That's when Nick and I both looked at each other like, ok, time to go into the storm cellar.  Count to five, and we were down there.  It was spiderwebby and musty.  And empty.  We ended up sitting on a cold hard floor, watching Curious George on my phone while waiting for the weather warning to be removed.  And then, eventually, we were all able to get back to sleep........around 5 AM........

The next day, the storms were still in the area.  Luckily, it cleared up for about 10 minutes so I could run out to the garage and get some folding chairs and a giant tote to put blankets and pillows in. I then stuck as many things as we had for emergency preparedness in the basement as I could.  Toys, blankets, pillows, wipies, some food, a rug, the pack'n'play.  And then, the lightning started again, super close and scary again, so we ran back into the basement until it passed.  And then Nick came home from school to help in case it got worse.

And then it did.  My alerts went from severe thunder storm warning, to tornado warning.  And it was in effect until 12 AM.  So then, we stayed up, waiting for the tornado to come and blow us away.  Which thankfully, it never did.  However, just west of us, the tornado hit and did some damage to some homes and businesses, nothing too horrible.  I guess the storm was a lot worse in Nebraska, more tornadoes and damage.

But the next day, when we were in Des Moines taking the kids to the doctors, more on that later, we stopped at Walmart and picked up the rest of the stuff on my basement list.  Like first aid kit, flashlights, bottled water, bowls, ziplocks, things like that.

Needless to say, I feel soooooo much better going down there now.

Oh, and that super loud lightning strike?  Yeah, it got a tree behind our house.  Blew it to pieces everywhere.

Stormy weather means trains

The tree