Rain and Wind and Tornados... Oh my!

What is up with this wild weather we are having?? Again, I had to look at the calendar to make sure I knew what month it actually was!

Yesterday, the temperature was beautiful... the high was 63*... In Illinois... In January.

Unfortunately, because of those temperatures, we had afternoon thunderstorms and a tornado touched down not too far from where I am....in January!

Tornadoes scare the crap out of me!! I'm used to some severe weather (thunderstorms, warnings, heavy rain) in the Spring... but not in January!

I watched the clouds from that storm roll in... I watched them get darker and darker as they moved closer and closer... I saw how black and green and mean looking they were... They made me shiver. And, to know that those same clouds and that same storm system was basically forming a tornado right over my head that would touchdown and cause damage/destruction just a few short miles away from me, made me shiver even more!

I will admit... I love a good thunderstorm... I love to watch the storms as they pass by... The roar of thunder, the bolt of lightening...clouds can be amazing and I can see the beauty in some of them.

There was no beauty in yesterday's clouds.

In New Jersey, we didn't have tornadoes...at least during my residency in that State... We had Nor'Easters, some hurricanes, remnants of hurricanes or tropical storms... but no tornadoes.

When I first moved out here, I was home alone on a Tuesday morning and heard the emergency sirens go off in my town. I found it odd because it was around 10:30 in the morning and the weather outside was fine...

(Okay, you have to understand that in New Jersey, in the town where I lived, the emergency sirens were used to let you know that school is canceled that day due to bad weather... mainly snow. On those days, between 6:30 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. the sirens would sound 3 times... Myself and probably every other child in that town anxiously awaited the sound of the siren because that meant it was a... Snow Day!!!)

Anyway, so the sirens are sounding at 10:30 on a Tuesday morning with perfect weather... I couldn't understand it. This happened for several months before I finally asked my husband about it. Since he grew up here maybe there was a reason there was no school on Tuesdays.

Once my husband was able to compose himself after laughing so hard at my question, he informed me that the sirens I heard were the emergency sirens... you know... emergency... Tornadoes!! *Yikes*

I didn't realize they had used the sirens in this way... for quite some time, I just thought there was no school on Tuesdays!!

In addition to hearing those emergency sirens every Tuesday morning (for testing purposes), I have heard them several other times (not for testing purposes)...

Unlike years ago when I couldn't wait to hear that siren sound to let me know there was no school that day... the sounds of that siren no longer evoke the same emotion in me as they did so long ago.