Crazy Weather

Where is all of this crazy weather coming from? Has the south ever seen this many tornadoes?

Waking up every morning and seeing the news coverage of another city who was hit by a tornado is shocking and makes me wonder why it is all happening.

As I watch the news I can't help but wonder my first true tornado experience. While living in Memphis the watches would always cross the screen and I never really thought anything of it. I am lucky that I had so many friends from the mid-west to educate me on proper tornado protocol. I would have been lost without my dear friend Amanda. She will forever and always be my tornado guru.

However, I never will forget the day the sirens were going off downtown. While at work we were told to head to the basement and hangout for a while because we were in tornado warning status. A bunch of us gathered in the basement for a little while, every now and then someone would say they were going to run out and try to get home. If it were up to me I would have stayed the night, I was petrified and not prepared for a 1/2 hour ride home. Amanda and I carpooled that day with our friend Rachel. She convinced that we were fine and could make it home. So we left, I started our drive up, and made it maybe five minutes down the road and looked at Amanda and told her she had to drive.

In the backseat Rachel was getting text message updates from her boyfriend, informing us that the sirens were going off downtown. I kept pestering Amanda asking if she was sure we were alright to drive back. She saw my panic but continued to say things were find. I was calling everyone downtown to hear about it, but each person I spoke with made me feel stupid that I was freaking out that much. I bet Amanda and Rachel wished they had a Xanax to give me so I would calm down.

Once we arrived home, it looked calm but I was convinced it was not. Instead I spent the night sleeping in my bathtub with a flashlight because I knew something bad was going to happen. Needless to say, everything was fine and I made it through the night secretly hoping that would never happen again.

In the end, I was told by a born and raised Memphian that tornadoes skip the bluff (which is downtown) so I shouldn't worry. I believed that and it forever made me realize that I would be safe if the sirens were going off...now all I had to worry about was the big earthquake whenever that was set to come.