Echoes.

My parents like to make fun of my absolutely psychotic fear of severe weather.
Not in the mean way, more in the ‘if you don’t turn off that weather radio right now I’m going to stuff it in your ears!’ kind of way.

And sometimes I understand.
I go way over the top.
And the damned this is LOUD.

But last weekend, about 1-ish in the morning, the tornado warning siren came off and I hurried to their bedroom to warn them as I do every time it happens.
Right as I reached them this hellish sounding wind hit, bringing torrential rain so loud that I jumped.  It was terrifying.

The storms continued but we were left mostly unscathed.

It wasn’t until during the week that we found out a tornado hit about a mile away.  To the southwest of us.  A tiny one – only EF-0 but a mile long path of destruction.
The wind and the rain were the remnants that hit my house.

Had that been a stronger storm I’d have never made it the 100 feet in time to warn them.  Or to reach shelter.

How sobering is that?

So while I am paranoid, and the damned radio is too loud… and I’m so aware of the limitations of the meteorologists’ abilities at night with just radar to guide them – I think I’ll continue my craziness.  And probably rudely insist that they move faster next time than the drunkenly-tired movements I inspired on Sunday.
Every second is one more chance to make it to that hallway, that basement, that bathroom.

And it matters.

What a way to make that perfectly clear to me.  In a way that the tornadoes I’ve been through haven’t.