Tornado Warning!

Yesterday, I got home from work and turned on the TV to watch a "Gilmore Girls" rerun. After about 15 minutes, a big blue screen popped up on the tube with the words "TORNADO WARNING" shouting at me in red letters. The official voice over, from the National Weather Service in Raleigh, NC told me, in no uncertain terms that a tornado had been spotted several miles west of me and was headed in my direction at a speed of 35 miles per hour. Yikes!!! I was instructed to get to the lowest floor of my building, in a hallway or interior room and cover my head.

I put on a pair of sturdy shoes, got some pillows and blankets, filled up a pitcher of water and made sure the gas was turned off in my fireplace. I rounded up the cats and prepared to sit in the hall for the next ten to twenty minutes. I alerted a couple of my neighbors.

I haven't been in a "tornado warning" area in a long time. When I was a little girl, we lived in Decatur, IL and (although a tornado never hit the town) we were very familiar with the fear of having our homes razed and trailers toppled by a giant funnel cloud. We had tornado drills in elementary school where we'd all file out in the hall, sit with our heads facing the wall and cover ourselves with our arms. Scary stuff when you're a kid!

So, somewhere deep in my psyche I was prepared for this disaster. I pulled down the window blinds to keep the flying glass debris to a minimum. I got my little Red-Cross Emergency Kit out of the closet and the cats and I waited.

Nothing happened. My neighbors left the building and went on with their lives. I went back inside my apartment and turned to the TV news. The funnel cloud went back up into the clouds and the big, bad storm headed north. Crisis averted. Phew!