Storms at Harvest Time

This evening when I stepped outside to survey the lawn and try to overcome my enertia of rest long enough to run the weed eater, I was more impressed with the untidy sky than the lawn scraggles. Looking up at the underbelly of cloud cover was like looking at a box of cotton balls, each with its own swirly distinctness. Usually, that means hail, and we are three days from the beginning of harvest. All the land between these little towns is a waving, gorgeous, mix of white gold and bronze. I’m sure all the farmers, and the relatives of farmers, and those who care about farmers were praying that the high flying winds would carry those ominous clouds away. I know I was.

The lightening started at about eleven. Elijah had called to say that he was on his way home from friends, so I worried—as is the fashion of moms—until he walked through the door. Then I unplugged the computer and went to bed.

A phone call from a friend woke us at 1:30 AM. There was a tornado to the northwest of us. That’s not the one you fear because they travel from southwest to northeast (usually), but the sky was exploding with lighting bursts and whenever it lit, you could see dark clouds dipping low. The siren went off about the time we all found our robes. Turtle, Elijah, and I moved the pile of “ready for the garage sale” stuff in the garage so we could pull Elijah’s car alongside mine. Turtle was resplendently in command—shouting in the storm, while I kept telling him to come back inside and get to the basement, so he wouldn’t be struck by lightening. He was worried about the church.

In minutes, really, we were all sitting comfortably in the basement, watching the news as a great mass of meteorologists tracked the storm. They kept re-assuring us that the entire crew had been called to the newsroom to protect us in some mysterious way, because that’s how much they cared. Maybe they were all manning phones from spotters on the ground, energy levels sparking, each anxious to reveal the latest new threat, or maybe they sat wishing they were home, huddled with their families in the hallways as the radar scans kept sweeping over the screen, updating, updating, updating until they updated the storm right into the next county.

Babystepper called from her mother-in-law’s basement (which doesn’t have a television) to see if it was safe to emerge. It was. Cell phones are wonderful. The ground was wet, so I suppose it rained, but no trees were down; that's a good sign.

We all went back to bed.

This morning there is no news about it on the internet; in the scope of world interest we rate very small, and that's another good sign. A catastrophe would have merited a headline at least. Elijah has gone to work at the COOP. The "give us this day our daily bread" part of the Lord's Prayer takes on an extra shade of importance for the next few weeks.

It's a gorgeous morning--cool, damp, sun still dimmed by high clouds. Maybe I'll run the weed-eather.

Update:

Well, I just talked to one of the local farmers who lives a mile north of town. He actually saw a tornado on the ground just north of his house. He was outside, watching the sky--which is actually a more up-to-the-minute way of getting the weather news--when, in the middle of a dead calm, he saw the funnel. He said there was a blast of warm wind, then a terrible cold wind, and he could hear debris flying. He went into the house and helped his wife down to the basement where they waited until the storm passed. Optimistically speaking though, he reported that they had received an inch of rain, but very little hail. I guess this will be a farmer by farmer report, because there was that much variety.