It’s March and the start of Tornado Season down here in Alabama. I’ve always been fascinated by the magnificent power of nature. Yes, I was the kid that stood on the sidewalk on a hot summer day as thunderstorms were rolling in, spreading out my arms, and waiting for the strong storm gust to almost blow me over.
Weather taken to a whole new level
Tornadoes were rare where I grew up, but we did have plenty of dust devils spin up in the fields during sunny days. That was my experience with twisters… But when hubby received orders in our early 20s to move to Fort Stewart, an Army post in Georgia, everything changed.
We temporarily lived in a trailer while we were waiting for military housing on post to become available. That year in the trailer park, I had become acutely aware of how dangerous storms can be. They don’t call trailer parks “Tornado Magnets” for no reason. Hubby was often gone for training exercises several weeks at the time, so it was just me, our 5 year old daughter, and our baby twin boys most times.
Flat broke back then, we saved enough change to buy a weather radio, because we were told by the military that it was a life-saving tool and a must-have if you lived in the South. Yes, that was the time before internet and cell phones.
We found out soon how valuable this weather radio was. Every time we had a strong storm blow through, especially at night, I was terrified. The thin walls and floors of our trailer shook with every clap of thunder, and the strong wind gusts made the entire trailer sway and groan. There was nothing I could do other than bring the kids in my bedroom and wait out the worst of the storm. Then, when the weather radio siren and outside tornado sirens went off, I held everyone tight and prayed the tornado would spare us and the threat would be over soon.
How my passion for stormy weather ignited
It didn’t take long for me to realize that I didn’t want to live in fear like this and began to educate myself about severe weather. I checked out books about storms from the library and learned a lot about meteorology. Soon, I became excited when I saw storms brewing out west. We’d watch them roll in, then I’d teach the kids about clouds and what to look out for. When things got really rough, we’d head to Walmart or at least go to a building that was sturdier than our flimsy old trailer whenever possible. Knowing more about severe weather gave me at least some options of mitigating the risk of injury and death during strong storms. I wasn’t as helpless and knew what to do.
The fascination grew…
Since then, we’ve seen some crazy weather throughout the years, including devastating hail storms, tornadoes, ice-storms, blizzards, and hurricanes. More on that in future posts.
Fun Fact: When the kids got older, we had this tradition to pop our favorite movie Twister into the VCR—later we upgraded to the DVD version—to get ready for a big storm system to arrive. And when the storm was close enough, we’d actually drive out to nice open areas to watch for tornadoes (from a safe distance, of course).
Fast forward to 2020 when the Southern Storms series was born. I knew I wanted to write sweet small-town romances, because that’s what I also love to read in fiction. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to tie in some unruly weather to make life a little more difficult for my characters? So I did. 😁
Finally, here’s a stormy treat for ya…
So here’s a crazy coincidence. I just had sent my Twist of Fate manuscript (the Tornado novel) to my editor when this happened. Here’s what we saw when we drove home after a quick trip to Walmart before a line of storms would hit on May 4, 2021. These cells were just north of our neighborhood. No warnings were issued—yet—but the clouds sure looked ominous.
Then we shot this video after we unloaded the groceries from the car. It’s actually funny… (not what happened and the damage that occurred in town, but hubby and I talking.) Poor hubby just wanted to get inside (‘scuse his mild French in the video), whereas I was just fascinated with the swirling and rotating of the clouds and the distinct line of rain coming toward us. I know, I was channeling my inner weather-nut… We do this every time we have a big storm blow through… 🤣😂🤣
What you didn’t see after the video ended was that all the trashcans got knocked over and debris was all over the streets. We didn’t even make it to our door into the house, when we suddenly lost power and had to lower the garage door manually—it dropped with a loud bang and scared the living daylights out of us. Then, as soon as we got inside our house, the sirens of all our devices—we have many— and the weather radio went off at the same time with a tornado warning for our area. Yikes!
Turns out, we had an EF-1 tornado sweep through the busy part of town about a mile south of us. The tornado came out of the blue, and neither the National Weather Service nor our local TV meteorologists expected a twister to spin up when it did.
When I drove home from work the next day, I took the route where the tornado had come through and saw that in one section of the road, trees were knocked down to the west, and a little up from that, they had been pushed down to the east. Definite rotation… We had a lot of damage to businesses, including our movie theater, and trees that had fallen on parked vehicles. It took a few days to restore power in that part of town. But as far as I know, there were no deaths, which I’m forever grateful for. Yes, I do love the excitements of storms but not when they damage property or take lives. And unfortunately, the latter is often the case.
