Bethanyology

Last night I heard my first Tornado Warning siren! It was exciting and a little bit scary, but not as bad as I would have expected. It was in the middle of the night, so even if we had looked out the window we couldn’t have seen anything. I guess my brain always imagines tornadoes happening in the daytime (probably thanks to Hollywood), but obviously they can happen at any time.

We actually didn’t end up having a tornado touch down near our home–just a rotating storm with tons of lighting and some hail–but it sounded like just a little bit south of the city and just a little bit north of us there were tornadoes that caused damage from the same part of the storm that traveled right over us.

The thing that concerns me now is that I didn’t know the difference between a Warning and a Watch. I thought a watch was worse than a warning, but it’s the other way around. Turns out we should have been holed up in the bathroom with the kids, but we were just watching the weather on TV and letting them sleep in their bedroom (Maggie’s bed is near a window, too!). Yikes! Now I know better. We were lucky.

I did gather our emergency supplies together in the bathroom just in case the weather man told us to go take cover. I was pleased that I knew where the flashlight was and had water bottles and snack food handy. I was also grateful to be on the bottom floor of the building. Oddly, it rather irrationally occurred to me that I was glad that the house was relatively clean so that in case we had to be rescued no one would think I’m a bad homemaker. It also (a little more reasonably) crossed my mind that if high winds somehow got in the bathroom it would have a lot of ammunition with all the possible projectiles in there in the form of shampoo bottles and toothbrushes and such. It’s funny what you think of when you’re getting ready for a possible emergency.

Tags: Family