Shortly before three the phone squawked and outside the tornado sirens wound to life. The thunderstorm watch in effect when I climbed into bed had turned into a full on tornado warning.
I decided staying upstairs in a tornado might not be wise, so I grabbed my phone and went downstairs. The wife was still up watching HGTV like many middle aged, middle class white women do (nothing racist there, just the TV demographics). The broadcast was interrupted by the warnings. We flipped over to a local channel and the radar was a mass of reds, oranges, and yellows boring down on suburbia in a long line stretching northeast to southwest; the normal tornado flow.
I headed to the front windows fronting squarely southwest. I opened the door. The air was calm, the night warm. Lightning lit the distant sky behind the houses across the cul-de-sac. As I stood there I could hear a low moan as the wind started to rise in front of the advancing storm. I pushed the door closed.
I could see my neighbor across the street come out on his porch and look around the corner at the coming tempest. As the rain arrived in wind-driven sheets he went back in, likely to his basement, a luxury I do not have.
The winds were high. The rain was heavy. The gutters overflowed. Thunder boomed. There were no dangerous twisters to throw my house upon unsuspecting witches. As is often the case with volatile storms, this one was in a hurry to get somewhere else. After fifteen or twenty minutes it had resolved into hard rain with windy gusts.
I went back to bed with the sound of rain lashing the windows.
This morning a weak sun lights up soaked pavement and saturated dead grass in what will be my weedy lawn in six weeks or so. The wind is still gusting.
I slept later than usual this morning. Late to bed, very early to premature rise, back to bed, doesn’t make a man wise, just tired.
And that is why I’m turning in my blog post late this morning.
I'm docking you five points for that.
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