Saturday and Sunday were gorgeous. We literally had the heat off and the windows and doors flung wide open to let in the beautiful, spring-like weather. Basking was called for.
Then came Monday night - of the first week of January - and we were hit with storms. Bad ones. From the reports of damage we’re hearing, they actually were not that bad in terms of destructions; however, news report are saying that they are some of the largest systems of storms to ever hit this area.
It started around 5pm, just as I was leaving work. Rain was gently falling around us, but places outside of our town were getting tornado reports and watches. By six, the thunder and lightening were going as if – to use a good mythological analogy – the gods were having battles with one another. The sirens started going off, and not liking the looks of the sky or the lightening surrounding us on all sides, we went ahead and set up our usual cubby for tornados. However, we didn’t go hide at that point. We did, however, watch the hail hammer our porch roof – hail the size of golf balls. Some places were reporting baseball size hail.
By seven or so, we were hunkered down in our little corner, complete with blankets, pillows, and two rather wiggly puppies. Then followed a night of 70-100 mile per hour winds swooping around the house, hail, crazy lightning (including green!), tornado warning after tornado warning – several funnel clouds forming and tornados right near our house – sirens going off for hours, and then sudden random periods of complete calm which were almost more scary than the winds because you didn’t know what was going to come next. I honestly don’t know how many warnings some of the towns around us had, but we had at least three that I’m sure of and I know of one town that had at least five last night.
Everyone was very, very sleep yesterday. And the weather continued to be a little weird because the temperature dropped from the 60s to low 40s in about half an hour! Oh the joys of winter in the Ozarks.
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