Shh! It's time for the weather report!

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