Its that time of year again, severe weather and tornados popping up all over the place. Living in Arkansas means I live in what people refer to as “Tornado Alley” and we definitely see quite a few tornados every Spring.
It seems as if the weather man is talking about severe weather every couple of days here lately, we had tornados as well as damaging straight line winds move through last week and now we are preparing for another storm tonight. Not only were the storms last week damaging, they were also tragic. Seven lives were lost during those storms, including several children. I cried as I watched the news and they gave us updates on each story.
The daddy and 18mth old baby girl asleep in bed when a tree came crashing down on the trailer killing them…the mother had just gotten out of bed to go check the weather
The mother who went to comfort her young son that had been woken up by the storm, she laid down in bed with him to help calm him and soothe him back to sleep when a tree fell on the house killed them both…her two year old daughter was in another room and unharmed
The grandfather that stayed in his RV parked in front of his families house just so he could be close to his grandbabies…killed when a tree crashed on top of the RV
the tragic stories continue and each one as heartbreaking as the last. As the news crew showed footage of the scenes, held up pictures of the ones whose lives were taken I cried and wanted to run in the other room and get my baby and hold her tight. I can’t imagine losing my little sweetheart and hubby the way the one women did…and yes, I’m normally the one in the room watching the weather while they are in the hallway preparing for the storm. I have always been terrified of storms and my fear has definintely increased now.
They had been predicting the weather to get nasty that night…I actually stayed awake until 1AM watching the updates. As the storms traveled across the state they seemed to be breaking up just a little and while still severe,were not at bad as they had been. I headed to bed, praying it wouldn’t get too bad. Next thing I knew my phone was going off with my sister’s ring tone and as I woke up I realized the tornado sirens were also going off. I knew something had to be bad for my sister to be calling…it was just a little after 2AM, I had barely been in the bed for an hour. She told me that when the line of storms reached our area, suddenly severe tornadic spots started popping up everywhere, including one in the town right next to us. I went straight to the TV to get a radar and sure enough, we had a possible tornado heading right for us…hubby went and got Abby out of bed and they settled into the hallway to wait out the storm. My poor baby looked so terrified, she had a death grip on her dada’s shirt. I stayed in the living room to watch the weather until the winds started to pick up and it was moving across us, then I joined my little family to wait until the storm was gone. We were lucky, the storms that caused the most damage…the ones that actually did form tornados went south of us, we got the straightline winds and some wind damage but that was it.
Last year, about this same time, I purchased a NOAA weather radio so that I would be alerted when severe weather headed our direction. Hubby and I are both such sound sleepers that we don’t always hear the siren going off or even my phone (my sister actually called twice that night to wake us up). My weather radio is actually still packed in a box from when we moved but after the other night I plan to hunt down the box its in. I want to know what the weather is doing, I want to have time to take care of my family
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