I’m going to start this off by saying that I am a weather
geek. I watch The Weather Channel. A lot.
I’m glued to it whenever there’s bad weather. Anywhere in the country. Jim Cantore calls me to tell me when there
are weather warnings for my area. I know
that if something’s getting ready to happen and Mike Seidel is there, it’s not
good. But if Jim Cantore is in your
neighborhood when weather’s gonna happen, you know it will be the worst.
I didn’t always have this thing about weather. But I think I came by it honestly. Mother always shushed us when it was time for
weather on the news. She could make any
kind of weather seem like it was the worst thing ever. I remember when, not more than a week or two
after we moved to New Jersey, it snowed.
A lot. Two feet, as I
recall. And, to be fair, it was bad. My aunt and two cousins had come down to see
us and help my mother put things in order – my mother was a horrible decorator!
– and they got stuck with us because the roads were closed. But ever after that, Mother would refer to it
as “The Snowstorm that Shut Down New Jersey”!
(My mother was naming storms before it actually became fashionable to do
it!) Thunderstorms, heavy rain, tornado
warnings, ice storms, you name it, Mother could blow it out of proportion.
Except for the two and a half years we lived in New Jersey,
we didn’t have to deal with snow on a regular basis. Which was fine by her. My brothers and I always wanted snow. We got more of it when we lived in Charlotte,
which we enjoyed, but we were in snow heaven when we lived in New Jersey. The two foot snowstorm was just the
beginning. We had white Christmases and
white Easters while we were there. We
sometimes didn’t have school when it snowed, but not always. That was the bad part. In the South, you pretty much never have to
go to school when it snows. Even when
it’s just a tiny bit. But whenever snow
was in the forecast in NJ, I can remember lying in bed in the morning waiting
to hear the siren blow at 6 AM. If the
fire station siren went off, that meant no school. If there was no siren, then you had to trudge
to school in the snow and cold. I would
never have admitted this to my mother, but there were times when snow got
old. Very old.
Snow in Charlotte
Snow in New Jersey
And today, I have turned into my mother when there is snow
in the forecast. Now, I definitely like
to see snow falling and when it makes everything look all pristine and pretty,
that’s nice too. I love going outside
when it’s snowing and no one’s out on the road and it’s all perfect and white
and it’s so quiet. But I don’t like
driving in it and I don’t like being stuck in the house for too long. So when it’s going to snow or is snowing or
might snow, I always hope that it won’t be a lot and that it won’t stick on the
streets. Just like Mother used to say.
I remember when we had the “Storm of the Century” back in
the early 90’s. Snow had been predicted
for days and a lot of it. My best friend
Debbie had been in town for an honor ceremony for her high school coach and I
had gone out to dinner the night before with her and a couple of her high
school friends. It was raining and I
remember thinking there was no way it would turn to snow. We were always being teased into thinking it
would really snow and then it wouldn’t.
But I was anxious about it and remember waking up a couple times during
the night and looking outside. Rain. No snow.
But when I woke up on that Saturday morning and checked outside, it was
a blizzard! It was pouring snow and it
was piling up like crazy. We lost power
for a good part of the day, but we had a fireplace and that tided us over until
it came back later that night. It was
sure pretty, but it was a hassle for days until it melted.
We had a similar storm here last winter. Predicted for days, but I was a skeptic. I remember that Sunday night turning on the
TV and seeing a huge traffic jam in Atlanta.
On a Sunday NIGHT!! It was the
snow. And when I looked outside it was a
blizzard! Holy cow! It was still snowing in the morning, or so I
thought. It actually was freezing rain
on TOP of the snow. Which made the whole
experience worse. I was trapped in my
house for 3 days. That’s not fun.
Snow in Atlanta - the bad kind
Snow the way I like it
Ice storms are the worst.
When I was in high school we had one that shut down Atlanta for a
week. We were lucky that we only lost
power for a day, but you can’t play in ice like you can in snow. We had another one the day before I started
my first HR job. And then there was the
one when I woke up to no power and I didn’t know how I was going to let my dogs
out. We had steep stairs both in front
and back of the house and I didn’t want them sliding down or falling through
and getting hurt. I finally decided
maybe to go out through the downstairs screened porch when the power came back
on! I took them out through the
garage. Poor Katie didn’t want to go
because it was slippery, but I made her.
I could hear the limbs cracking and crashing the whole time. As soon as we were back in the house and the
garage door was closed, the power went out again. I always thought that was divine providence!
I always feel bad for my dogs in bad weather. They never want to go out in the rain and I
hate how wet they get. Winnie, my first
Scottie, loved snow. She would leap
around and bury her nose in it. We
called her a little deer. Katie hated
it. She didn’t like how it felt and she
didn’t like how it clumped in her fur. I
could relate. Mollie doesn’t like
getting wet in the rain and she’s not a fan of the snow. When we had the big storm last year, she had
the worst time figuring out how to go to the bathroom. It was a little comical.
Mollie in the snow
I grew up being afraid of thunder and lightning. To this day I cannot sleep through a
thunderstorm. I will wake up every time
and I can’t go back to sleep until it’s over.
Lightning makes me want to close my eyes, which is not good when you’re
driving, but I can’t close off the sensation.
I can remember in college lying in bed and wailing with my roommate Mary
about the fact that we had our eyes closed and we could still see the
lightning! People have tried to help –
my friend Shellay sang this little song “don’t be afraid of thunder, it’s
nothing but a great big sound” and an old boyfriend tried to soothe me by
telling me to imagine it was the sound of his voice – but that never
helped. Thunder makes me jumpy and it
makes me wince, especially when it’s very loud.
And lightning. Well, besides the
fact that I can’t shut out the flash, I worry that it will hit my house. Or a tree in my yard, that will then fall on
my house.
The main thing about thunderstorms for me, I think, is the
fear that they will turn into tornadoes.
I used to listen for the sound and how long the sound would go on. In my mind, if the sound didn’t stop, it was
a tornado. Mother was always on super
alert when thunderstorms went bad. She
was like the town crier with the tornado watches and warnings, which probably
didn’t help my own jitteriness. I
remember when a tornado came through Atlanta and hit the governor’s
mansion. When I heard the tornado
warning, I remember sprinting downstairs because I couldn’t believe she hadn’t
hollered up the stairs to let us know.
She was all calm, watching TV and knitting, and said “oh, it’s all over,
it hit the governor’s mansion”. Her
little barometer of bad weather was our dog Mike. When weather was severe, he would come sit
right on her feet. As soon as it was
past, he moved off. And he was already
off eying Daddy’s chair.
My biggest fear was that a tornado would come through in the
middle of the night. In April 1998, my
worst fear came true. It had been a
stormy day and night, but when I went to bed it was calm. I was woken up by, you guessed it, thunder
and lightning. I remember looking at the
clock – 12:43 AM. My dogs were down in
the kitchen. Winnie was spooked by
thunderstorms and I got out of bed thinking that I might need to go down and
get her. About that time the power went
out and the lightning started to strobe flash.
My then-husband leapt out of bed and started yelling “Get
downstairs! Get downstairs!” I was running down the hallway, all hunched
over for some reason, and he pulled down the gate at the kitchen and herded the
dogs after me as we ran down to the basement.
All I could hear was BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!
We hid under a steel desk in the basement until the noise finally
stopped. I was so terrified I wanted to
throw up. And pee my pants. We finally went back upstairs and the house
seemed ok. It was still lightning and I
remember looking up through the upper windows and realizing that trees that
used to be there weren’t any more. It
was hard to tell exactly what had happened until daylight, but we were
fortunate. A lot of trees down and some
damage to the house, but it could have been worse. I remember calling Mother that morning and
telling her that we got hit.
For a number of years after that, I was extra sensitive to
severe weather. Even today, I can feel
my adrenaline going and my heart rate speeding up. If there’s a risk of severe weather during
the night, I can’t sleep until it’s over.
I have a plan for severe storms that includes hunkering down in the
guest bathroom with a battery powered radio, my phone, my iPad, pillows,
blankets, a flashlight and my Comcast hardhat.
I am ready! Mother would be
proud. J
