A Night in the Closet

Well, its Tornado Season, and I hate tornado season. Last night we had some serious storms. I was out doing a couple errands after Young Women's. There was a lot of lightning, but it wasn't raining or anything and then Justin called me and told me to come home right away. I had no idea what was going on. At home on tv they were calling for severe thunderstorms with golf ball & baseball size hail, which were very likely to produce tornados and the worst part of the storm was headed straight for Pflugerville (that's where we live).

Last year we designated the closet under the stairs as our tornado closet. We keep it cleared out with the exception of some jackets, shoes and our 72-hour kits. They were really being serious about this on the tv, so we got the kids out of bed b/c if they said there was a tornado I didn't want to have to run up and get them out of bed before going into hiding in the closet. So we had the kids only for a couple of minutes when they put a little animated tornado icon over "Pflugerville" on the map and said that radar was showing a funnel cloud forming about a mile and a half NE of downtown Pflugerville. That's exactly where we live. So we got in the closet.

Tolan thought it was great, he was laughing and squirming and Logan was totally freaked out. Justin couldn't get over how hot it was in there and I couldn't believe we were actually in the closet. We weren't in there very long b/c it didn't even sound like it was raining and we definitely didn't hear a tornado. So Justin got out to check the tv and the storm had already blown over Pville, and was now weakened with much less threat of a tornado. So we got out and put the kids back to bed.

I feel kind of silly about the whole closet thing now b/c nothing happened at all, but what can I say? They were telling us to take cover. If nothing else it was a good opportunity to think up all those extra things I should have in our 72-hour kits, but that we don't. (Diapers, bottles, formula, etc) And it was also a good reinforcement in my brain that I should have bought that weather radio I almost bought just days before. I seriously had my hand on it, and then decided to spend the extra $30 "next time." Sitting in the closet without any idea what was going on outside made me really wish I had bought it!