Safe!

It was stormy here last night, one of those nights when it is good to live in a snug house on top of a rise in the terrain.  We watched television throughout most of the storms that crossed the whole of Arkansas from Shreveport and Texarkana to Memphis and the Mississippi River. 

Things have really changed weatherwise.  I remember when I was a youngster in Kansas, when the weather got bad, windy and rainy and then the hail would fall, we would all run for the storm shelter while the weather cell passed over.  We didn't have any idea if there would be a tornado, but better safe underground than hurt by a storm.    As a child, I didn't mind.  Our tornado shelter doubled as the fruit cellar and was full to the brim with wonderful things that my Grandmother and my Aunts had stocked away in fruit jars.  There were homemade candles and we had light.  We all grabbed our pillows and our blankets to take with us into the cellar, so as a child, sheltering from a storm was almost comfortable, practically fun.

Today the weather watchers have instruments and cameras and doppler radar.  The television shows were blanked out and the Little Rock stations went 'local' and followed the bad weather all along its way.  On our computer, we could watch the storm travel across the map, live and in vivid color.  We were told almost exactly to the moment when the winds were going to start.  We were prepared for the high winds and listening for any sirens.  Bismarck has tornado sirens that will go off if the conditions are right.  We have a lower floor, a basement in our house.  The best place to take shelter is equipped with a king size bed and a window air conditioner and ceiling fans to keep us cool.  It has a big screen television set and a little refrigerator, a full bath with a walk in shower and NO WINDOWS!  What, me worry? We were safe from last night's storms. 

But a few places in Arkansas were hard hit.  On television we watched a small town named Sunshine as a tornado touched down in a wide swath and moved slowly with it's black cloud (The weather service called it's "junk" cloud...meaning the cloud held all the dirt and branches and trash and parts and pieces the tornado had picked up and was carrying along with it) and everything in its path dissappeared.  Storm chasers now take pictures from a distance, but in a storm, you can't say for sure what has happened until it is over and those who can go to check on the circumstances of others.  Immediately after the storms passed, ambulances rushed in, so those of us watching the scene could know that someone got hurt!

The weather men said that Arkansas was getting tornado activity that was normally the kind that Oklahoma or Kansas would get because of the tornado's wide path of destruction and the fact that the swirling tornado stayed on the ground for a very long time before rising back up or blowing itself out.  At one point, when the weather activity and the tornado touchdowns were passing through Hot Springs Village, I worried about my friend Mirka, who lives in Hot Springs a few miles south...but when I called to talk to her to say it was going to be all right, her cell phone had no signal. 

Watching on our television, we could see a highway sign that was familiar to us just outside Hot Springs on Highway 70.  It said to a right turn at the next exit would take you to Carpenter Dam. On the television, in front of our eyes, the dark clouds formed a trail that touched down.  The traffic moving along the four lane highway didn't stop.  The road seemed to be almost as busy as it is on any normal afternoon.  The storm was moving fast, and the tail of dark clouds didn't last long, but had it been worse, there would not have been any shelter for the cameramen in the van!  The television weatherman was as startled as anyone and started immediately to warn the camera crew to take care and to get out of there!!

At one point, when the storms went through North Little Rock, the US weather advisory personel went off duty so they could seek shelter as the storms blew over their location. 

This morning, in my yard there are leaves and limbs everywhere, but all is well.  I spoke to Mirka, and she had gone to work.  She said she had some branches fall on her roof, but the damage was not bad and that she weathered the storm.  I am especially aware that all is well with us when I see on television that Governor Beebe is making the rounds of the small towns that were damaged and speaking to survivors, some of whom lost family and friends and many lost all their belongings when tornadoes touched down.  Today once again, Arkansas has areas of concern, conditions right for a super-cell weather circulation to form.  The name has changed, but the damage a tornado can do hasn't.