Hell Knows No Fury Like Mother Nature on a Purge

Normally I love thunderstorms. Few things are as exciting and kinetic—and ironically, nothing makes me sleep better. Except when they’re punctuated with tornado sirens.

Last night I was looking forward to Mother Nature’s forecasted pyrotechnic show. Then the tornado sirens started, and I started watching TV and listening to the radio for reports. They kept giving expected—and extended—times that a tornado might hit my area, but they never mentioned any actual sightings.

Should I go down to the basement? My dogs, Bill and Charlie, are geriatric and don’t do stairs. They also collectively weigh in at over 110 pounds. The thought of carrying each down steep wooden steps and eventually carrying them back up was formidable. I got a tiny sense of what folks in New Orleans were experiencing last year as they assessed safety issues versus their pets’ well-being.

I felt exhausted and finally decided to play the odds, stay above ground, and go to bed as my dead-tired body was begging. I kept the radio on so I could perhaps get the heads-up if a tornado actually came into existence in my universe.

I don’t know if it was another tornado siren or the dogs’ restlessness that woke me at 1:30. It was showtime. No twister, but plenty of action. I raised the blinds so I could better absorb the phantasmagoria. White-hot canopies of lightning illuminated the night to show walls of rain descending. The sound effects were those of a howitzer as fists of hail landed continuous sucker-punches to the roof, accompanied by deep-in-the-belly bursts of thunder, followed by the sounds of the sky being ripped and cracked apart. Every flash brought a new scene, and it was mesmerizing and never-ending.

Finally it was 2:00 a.m., and although the show wasn’t over, I needed some sleep. The dogs settled, and I drifted off, filled with the experience and contemplative in its aftermath. How gracious is Nature, our Mother and favorite Drama Queen, to so beautifully and theatrically give us a great show with the resulting bonus of a clean slate and fresh air to breathe again.