JacquieP
Staff Captain
Mary Ann and Captain Weather do a fantastic job of letting us know about our weather, but I have found a new predictor. If you get up at 4:00 am to get ready for work and find a toad hopping around in your living room, watch out! We had a little thunder and a little rain, and lots of wind, but the television weather guys said that the tornado sirens were going off because we were going to have high wind. Yeah, right! I headed for work because there were no predictions. The transformer across the street exploded. That was my first clue, but I kept driving, and stopped several times to remove branches from the road. Then I thought I saw newspaper pages blowing over the car. No big deal, so I kept driving. Still no tornado warnings. I heard a loud crack and thought someone was shooting at me. A huge tree had fallen about 5 feet in front of my car, and it blocked both lanes of traffic (what little traffic there is at 5:00 am). I turned around and saw a policeman guarding a convenience store so I told him about the tree. He told me to drive around the tree. Still no hint of any warnings, just massive power outages. I tried the street a mile north and had better luck, but had to get out to move orange barricade barrels that had blown over into the traffic lane, but had help from a young man headed in the other direction. Kept going, but found another limb down. Don't ask me why, but I always keep my old Girl Scout bow saw in my car, so I had to use it on the limb. I finally made it to work about 30 minutes late, and my supervisor asked me what in the world I was doing there. Uh, working, I think???? He told me that what I thought were newspapers was actually part of the roof that had been blown off a strip shopping center, and that I had just driven through two small tornadoes and 92 mph straight wind gusts. I've always heard that God protects idiots and small children, so I think I've discovered my category. Moral of the story is this; don't trust television weather forecasters, policemen, your dogs, or your bird when it comes to forecasting tornadoes, but if a toad hops across the living room in front of you, watch out! And yes, this is a true story1
