Trouble Brewing

On my former blogging platform I indicated that I like living in the upper plains because I enjoy the weather. Truthfully, that was only a partial truth. I do, indeed, enjoy the change of seasons we experience at the 44th latitude. I cannot imagine living in an environment where there is little adjustment in temperature and precipitation throughout the calendar year. That being said, there is one thing I am not crazy about on the upper plains. I am a complete puddle of anxiety when summer storms move through our area. The following is a post I wrote during a late August storm this year.

My phone is chirping away with tornado warnings and thunderstorm warnings. The sky is black and swirling and the air smells of trouble. It is a warm and humid day and a cool front on the horizon is a sure sign that a line of instability will squeegee its way across our region. I am no fan of such instability. I have childhood memories of one extremely bad storm in particular. The sky turned pitch black and a Wizard of Oz event unfolded. My recollection is of time spent in our cellar, windows blown out and a trip to our grandparents while my parents cleaned up the mess. There is a pre-storm smell that can make me edgy to this day.

My husband has a different reaction to summer storms. He usually stands outside and watches the drama unfold around him. Despite "please-take-cover-now" warnings, he enjoys watching the skies and he moves inside only if significant hail is involved. On rare occasions he joins me in the basement. I think he does so in an attempt to appease me and not because he thinks it is a prudent action on his part.

Our first stormy round for this evening has eased a bit but I still hear the continuous grumbling of another line of storms. New warnings are being issued for strong winds, hail, possible flooding. And, you guessed it, my husband is still standing outside under the eaves watching the pea-sized hail bounce around on the driveway. I am writing so I can distract myself from the pinging sounds of the hail on the windows and the warning crawls on the TV screen.

We were spoiled with a fairly calm summer this year but that also meant we experienced drought conditions. In a perfect world we would receive gently falling rains in a timely manner for our precipitation needs. Alas, that rarely happens. It seems that our silver linings are often attached to significant cloud action. The upside of our prairie storms is that they are often short-lived, unlike the slow crawl of hurricanes or devastating forest fires caused by lightning strikes.

There is a certain beauty and majesty in a prairie storm, just ask my husband. That being said, I will always be a little spooked by atmospheric instability. It reminds me that there are many things on earth that I have no control over.

No doubt that is a good thing.

(p.s. My husband finally went to the basement, not because of safety concerns but due to a torrential downpour that caused some flooding in our lower level. Pro Tip: Always have two shop vacs at the ready and make sure both of you are handy with shop vacs. I will let you guess which one of us needs to go to shop vac school.)