The storm

I've probably mentioned once or twice that I am not a fan of storms. Last summer there were some insane thunderstorms that I spent a lot of sleepless nights panicking about. This summer seemed much less active as far as severe weather goes. I don't know if it's a slow year for storms, or this is more average for a typical Iowa summer... I only have one summer to compare it to and that's when half the state was under water.

Anyway, we had a killer storm yesterday evening that shook me to the core pretty badly. It was weird because I looked out the window at the ominous clouds and I was like "oh, gosh, looks like it might storm." And as soon as I finished the thought, all hell broke loose.

My big thing is that I can't handle these huge storms alone. I just seriously can't. Last summer there was a tornado or a funnel cloud that missed the city by what felt like inches, but I didn't panick nearly as much because I was an RA and had to take control of an emergency situation. It's weird how that happens. Ordinarily I would be curled up in my bathtub with a picture of my family conviced I was going to die. But my brain kind of skipped that step and went into "take control" mode. I didn't mind it, of course.

But this summer I have no residents and I find that when it's just me alone in my top-of-the-building apartment, I really tend to freak out. Oddly, as far as I know, there were no threats of tornadoes with this storm, but it was still one of the scaries thunderstorms I've ever seen. I looked out the window and at one point I couldn't see anything at all because the rain was so hard, visibility was zero. And when I could see, it didn't look like rain was falling at all, rather being blown around in massive, horizontal sheets. I could see it blow off the roofs of other buildings and fall half way to the ground before it shot straight back up into the air again. All the debris in the tri-state area seemed like it landed in the pool. Branches were falling left and right, lightning was right on top of us. I stood at my bedroom window and put my hands on the glass and could feel the window flex in the wind.

There's always one man I can turn to during times like these. Channel 8's John McLaughlin. He's the best and I love him. Except that my cable tends to freeze or something during really terrible storms. It doesn't go out, exactly. Either the picture freezes or I get a black screen saying "this channel will be available momentarily" for a couple of hours. I have yet to determine if this affects my internet because my computer can pick up wireless signals from my neighbors... so if someone has functioning internet that isn't password-protected, I can still be online. But the problem is the signal is usually fairly weak so weather sites with a lot of interactive, moving maps take much too long to load.

So... yeah... it was all rather traumatic. But, as with most storms, it left as quickly as it came and an hour later there was hardly any evidence that it was there... oh, except for the damage to my apartment which includes a roof that leaks in four places (opposed to only two earlier this summer), a chunk of ceiling that fell onto my living room floor, my bedroom window that was cracked from a stray piece of hail and another window that clearly leaks (hence the puddle of water on the sill and carpet under it).

Yay.