Clash of the Seasons

Spring can be a war zone around here. Like summer and winter are still fighting for control and we’re collateral damage. So when you get a couple of really warm and humid days this early in the spring, there’s a good chance that cold air is getting ready for a counter attack. The good news is that there wasn’t any real damage around the house.

It’s early evening and I’m in my office playing on the computer. My wife has retreated downstairs to binge watch something. And Rocco keeps making visits to my office where he just stares at me. At one point, he came over to get some attention. Normally, I interpret this as his needing to go outside but after the third or fourth time, that clearly wasn’t the case anymore.

Right about then, my weather apps starting lighting up my phone with warnings about thunderstorms and dangerous conditions. After receiving all sorts of unimportant “warnings” it was good to actually get a meaningful warning of impending weather doom. I got on the radar and boy was it colorful – and a bit scary as well.

Rocco is normally not bothered by storms but this one seemed to trigger something in him and he just needed to be in a place where he could track my movements. So I moved out into the great room because he has a bed there and he can lie down and maybe chill out a bit.

Have sat through a lot of storms and I tell you that this one was downright eerie. There was some mist/fog around and huge strikes of lightning through the clouds. The wind was unlike anything I’ve experienced before. They say a tornado sounds like a train coming and this was just about that loud. It was rattling the windows in places. No tornado near us though – just some serious wind gusts.

Then the power flickered on and off a couple of times. Sent me scrambling in the dark to the place where we keep all the flashlights with Rocco on my heels. That’s when the hail started. Hail is some serious stuff. I’m hoping there wasn’t damage to the roof but it was a good five minutes or so of hail pounding everything and adding to the noise.

At some point, the sirens went off. Which is really not what you want to hear. The weather app said it was to the south so I didn’t grab Rocco and head for cover. Thought about it but decided that the worst was mostly over. Turned on the TV to the weather coverage just to be sure and then waited for things to die down.

I noticed that after the hail had gone through, Rocco had fallen asleep. That kind of made me relax a little bit which might not have been a good thing. But I figured that he seemed to know it was coming so maybe he knew when we were out of danger.

Today, it is significantly colder than it was yesterday and we might have some frost tomorrow night.

Technically, I was ignoring the advice of the weather people because they tell you that when it all starts going to hell, you need to get to shelter. Sitting in my great room watching the trees bend and sway in the wind through my big windows isn’t really sheltering in place. But I guess we are all drawn to nature’s fury. Besides, I really didn’t want to grab Rocco and try and get him into the interior closet we’d use for that purpose.

It was a fun night for a bit. I can live without that kind of excitement for a bit now.