Heavy weather

Well, as many of you have no doubt heard, we've had our share of weather this weekend. My family and I have just returned from an overnight 'holiday' at my parents house, after a 10:30 p.m. tornado warning  prompted us to take shelter. I could make glib remarks about the time, or complain about the fact that because it lasted until 5:30 this morning, we weren't able to judge about whether we needed to take shelter or not. I could do that, but the fact remains that I am eternally grateful that I have someplace to take my family in the event a tornado decides to drop in.

And brother, do we get tornados. Tornados seem to really like the town that I work in. I've personally covered five of them for my newspaper, and have developed a deep, abiding hatred for them. And yes, I mean hatred. I know it's bad sport to hate anything, much less something that came from the hand of God, and I'm sure he knows better than me. But I've developed an actual hatred of tornados. I've only seen a handful of smashed houses — places where nothing but the sheer violence of wind created a soggy debris field of wood, insulation, clothing, photos and all the other things that people own spread hundreds of feet across their neighbor's bean field. But those few times have been enough to make me hate the word 'tornado.'

But I digress; the point of this post is simply to let everyone know that we're fine, and to say "goodness, we certainly are getting a whole lot of wet." We were obliged to go to town yesterday, and I must say I haven't seen flooding like that in the entire time I've lived here. We had to take an alternate route at least once because of submerged roads. The parking lot of The Catfish Place, a popular local eatery, was entirely submerged (needless to say, they were closed). And the creek that borders the back yard of my daughter's best friend's home had risen all the way up to the house. When I was there, the muddy water rushing through the yard made it look like they'd built on a river bank.

So we have had an interesting time here, but all are safe. By the way, the title of this post is a twofold musical reference. For starters, Heavy Weather is the title of a Weather Report album (that I do not own).  It is also a lyric from the Jethro Tull album Heavy Horses (which I do own — picked it up in England on my honeymoon). The phrase comes from the title track.

Bring me a wheel of oaken wood
A rein of polished leather
A heavy horse and a tumbling sky
Brewing heavy weather.

Stay dry, everyone.