Sobering Weather

John had texted and then called about 6 PM from Pittsburgh to tell me about approaching weather. He knew I'd have my head in the computer writing and not be listening to weather reports, something I ignore with great seriousness. As oft happens, I declared him a worry wart, saying we'd be fine. But, then two minutes later, I looked up from my screen to see rain pouring down and hear thunder in the distance. My two ten pound my Japanese gong bells rang loudly despite being protected on the patio with two eight foot brick walls.

It was time to shut down the computer, leave the office and retreat into the sturdy house to watch the TV. All the local channels had shut down normal programming and gone to full time weather reporting with large and colorful radar displays with guys in white shirts, ties and gray suits telling us what it all meant. Large batches of green mean rain, get your umbrella out. Yellow means heavier rain with winds. Red means oh, my God it's raining sideways. Hot pink means head for the shelter. And, a small green icon in the middle of a big hook of red within a bowl of green means TORNADO. The weather came from the south and south west in Arkansas (I new there was a reason for that sad state) and inched its way into Mississippi and Tennessee. I watched it all jerkily shift across my screen for several hours. It's kind of like watching your life pass in front of you while you eat your dinner -- an out of body experience.

Fred and Joe-Joe sat with me on the couch, keeping me snug. I looked up about 8:30 to find the rain had stopped. Even though it was early, I opened to the door to take the boys on their last walk of the day. We were confronted with a gusty swirling winds and 70 degree humid temperatures. So, with heads bend into the wind we walked, they pooped, I swooped it all up with my best single hand reverse plastic bag scoop pitch and we headed for home.

I wasn't worried about the storms until, on the way back, my next door neighbor comes walking toward me yelling through the wind, "This is going to be the real thing." Then he dashes to his big Suburban to move it out from under a tree. Hummm, should I move our cars? But to where? We have no garage since I insisted on building an office out of it. I opted to check that they were not under trees. They weren't. They were between trees.

I spent the rest of the evening watching the TV screen show me where the tornados might be. The dogs slept the sleep of the innocent. At 9:30 I looked out the front windows to see it raining sideways. The winds must have exceeded 30 or 40 miles/hour. For a minute my heart skipped some beats and I considered taking myself and the dogs into the guest bathroom (only place on the first floor without windows). I worried how I was going to get the dogs to kneel, put their heads between their legs and raise their front paws over their heads and wrap them around their ears to protect themselves from flying debris.

By 10 PM, however, it was clear that what our realtor told us was true -- downtown Memphis doesn't gets tornados. They go around. Maybe it's the bluffs or the river or a combination. Those storms scooted around downtown Memphis as if the area were a military nuclear test range with a big "Keep off" sign glowing up into the sky. Tornados were sited all around the suburbs and more rural areas. The closest to us was about 12 miles from the house -- north east of the airport at the Hickory Hill Mall and to the north east of the city. Both property and lives were lost. The chaos is all over the papers in living color for past two days. Pictures of a line of semi trailers blown over onto their sides and a row of light poles snapped off at fix feet above the ground would be artistic if the cause weren't so deadly.

Life outside this city can be a very scary place in the mid-south.