Weather Spotting-At Home- Part 2

Here is another Skywarn/ Weather Spotter class deja-vu’.

So, TINS (This Is No Shit), TIWFDASL (There I Was, Fighting Disease And Saving Lives), at work as a day shift ER RN in BFE Community Hospital. This was years and years ago-decades, really- and TDW and our (at that time) two kids were in town, and she stopped by to visit briefly.

The clerk told me that they were here, and I strolled out into the parking lot to say hello. Once there, I observed that the skies over our little rural town were a sickly shade of green. Not good. Very not good.

I shepherded my wife and kids into the hospital, and directed TDW to take the kids into the bathroom, conveniently located across the hallway from the department, and, for bonus points, was removed by a storage room from the outside wall.

Just about the time I got my family situated, our direct line to sheriff dispatch rang, informing us that there was a tornado warning, and we-all of us, staff, patients, guests and all- needed to take shelter immediately.

Our charge nurse paged the warning overhead to the rest of the hospital, and the rest of us notified the waiting room denizens to stay put, and away from the windows and doors. We were blessed that the ER had no windows, and did have solid cinder block construction.

Once the all clear was called, I retrieved my family from the bathroom, and walked them out to TDW’s vehicle.

When I got home that evening, she regaled me with her observations. Along the route that we all took every time we went to town, there was a full sized barn, that the storm had moved off it’s foundations.

Contemplate what those winds would have done to a sedan with a woman and two children inside.

A bit farther out into the county, a mobile home dealer had several of his display models rolled over onto their sides. One wound up in the roadway.

Contemplate, oh, let’s say, a sedan with a woman and two children, re-enacting the house-on-the-witch scene from The Wizard of Oz.

I found that prospect to be, let us term it, “unappealing”.

Another stroke of good fortune lay in the fact that OUR mobile home came through unscathed.

Am I paranoid if I react as if Fate was plotting to get me? Or my family?