And God said, "Stand back, I'm gonna make it rain!"
Shelby and I were at HeartMender's Horse Barn, where he's volunteering and learning about horses. Then one of the barn people (Debbie) said that weather was coming, from the direction of my house, but not there yet, and she was sending us home then, before it got there, or worse, between home and the barn and I'd be driving through it. So we drove home and got there just barely before the storm hit and the sirens started going off. This was moments before 5. And neither Mark nor Thomas were home, although Mark pulled up right about then.
I knew Thomas was on campus at a meeting for Aspergers students, scheduled from 4-5pm. Mark said don't worry, the people in charge would keep all the group there, blah blah. yeah right, I believed that. So I was calling T's cell, and not getting through (there area lot of buildings at UAH where you can't get reception -- good concrete) and then about 5:15, right as we began to hear about an actual tornado being spotted not too far north of the house, and our area went from watch to warning, I got him. He's in the car, half way home! I (knowing I must not scream or be scary) apprised him of the situation, and said, "well, keep watching, hurry but drive carefully, and DO NOT GO ANY FURTHER NORTH!"
Of course, all was eventually well, that tornado kept moving north and and any others spotted weren't that close. But the weather continued to be way too exciting until after midnight.
I went ahead and went to my auxiliary meeting, since there was a long break between the first line and the next one coming across the Mississippi line. There were four of us, the really hardcore moms. We'd been calling around and I'd said that if I didn't actually see a tornado, I was going! (What? I should miss an opportunity to be out of the house, without the boys and around other women? I think not!) One of our AS sons, who is all about weather, was supposed to call if it looked dangerous where we were, etc. Right about the time we were wrapping up, we looked outside, through one of the two floor to ceiling glass walls (we were meeting at a Jason's Deli), and it looked just like it had looked earlier at home. So Linda called her boy the weather geek, and asked, "hey, uh,??" He said it had been just really bad thunderstorms as it moved across Madison and into Huntsville, and had just that minute, as Linda was calling, started "producing rotation" and the sirens went off while they were talking (he could hear them, we could not) but that the danger was really just past us (barely) and headed for East and South Huntsville. He instructed us to sit there a little while longer and wait for the rain to abate and then we could drive home. (Well, I guess it was his area of expertise, and we had called, so acting as an authority figure to the moms wasn't too far a stretch.)
The Epilogue: Thomas read his email today and got the notice from the UAH campus warning system that they were now under a tornado warning. That was Weds. He read the message Saturday. Working like a charm, I'd say.
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