Stormy Weather

When I was a kid I was TERRIFIED of thunderstorms.  I’m not kidding, ask my mom if you don’t believe me.  I would totally panic.  I remember one day in the second grade very clearly.  We were in class and the sky started turning all dark and I started to get really scared.  There was another kid in my class, Danny, and he was just as much of a chicken as I was.  So Ms. Baron let us sit behind this halfwall/bookcase that separated the coat racks from the main classroom.  We got to play checkers and other board games while the rest of the class learned (hmmmm, I hope I didn’t miss anything too important).  I remember another time when I was sent to the principal’s office during a storm.  This really wasn’t a good idea, because they had a weather radio and all I remember hearing was “take cover immediately”, of course the storm wasn’t near us but I didn’t know that!

Why do I write this now?  Because as I type I am sitting on the front porch and a pretty good storm is blowing (literally) through.  I’m not sure when I happened, but I stopped being scared of storms and now I think they are kinda cool.  My stomach still gets a little knotted, but I don’t panic anymore.  I don’t have to run and hide in the basement or curl up in a ball.  This storm probably won’t be that bad.  There is something about the geology and climatology of Marquette that saves us from the “big ones”.  The lake plays a big part in that as to the surrounding “mountains” and hilly terrain.  There really big storms tend to break up just as they get to us. (gotta go in, the rain is getting to hard for the laptop)

Even though I’m not afraid of storms anymore, I still get jumpy sometimes!  You see, where I’m from downstate we have “tornado sirens”.  These are big sirens that go off when there is a severe weather warning.  Apparently the Marquette hasn’t heard of this concept (or they don’t need it because of the funky weather thing I talked about earlier).  They do however have those big sirens.  I remember my freshman year at NMU.  I had only been here a few weeks and I heard the tornado siren go off.  It was a gorgeous day so I thought they were just testing them (they do that downstate).  A few days later I heard it again, but it was rainy that day.  I thought, wow it doesn’t seem like stormy weather but they just tested them, so I guess something’s headed this way!  When I mentioned it to someone in my hall, they just laughed at me.  I didn’t get it.  Up here, they use that siren to alert the volunteer firefighters that there is a fire call.  That way the ones that aren’t on duty can be ready just in case a second call comes in.  CRAZY.  So long story short…that siren goes off a lot, and I usually just ignore it (if I even acknowledge it), but every once in a while it’ll put a knot in my stomach and I’ll have to remind myself that there’s no storm, just a fire somewhere (not sure which one is worse really).

So that’s enough of my Storm Stories, though I have a few more (ask me about the neighbor’s dog/weather detector sometime).

 

p.s. Just checked the radar, the big red blob it about 2 miles from my house, but it shrank and I think it’s going north of us, so I’ll get a good soaking rain (that the lawn really needs) but no thunderstorm, oh well, it could have been fun!