The redbuds are out, the irises are blooming, the trees are leafing out, the grass is greening, and we're all trying to get our vegetable gardens in so we can have some great big huge ripe tomatoes come Independence Day.
However, one of the drawbacks to Spring in the South is Gawd-Awful rotten weather.
We just happen to live in the part of the country where cold fronts and warm fronts tend to bump into each other which means we get a lot - A LOT - of thunderstorms and rain and the occasional tornado. When I went house-hunting when we first moved here, Hubby wanted one thing - a full, finished basement. The primary reason was he had somewhere to put his office and our massive book collection but the other reason was "they have too many tornadoes and we'll need some place to go." The fact that a tornado siren is down at the end of my street was just a bonus.
Tuesday night they were predicting some really bad weather to come our way and I was hoping it would come through before it got too late. I can't sleep during severe weather and really didn't want to spend most of the night in the basement. As luck would have it, I was sound asleep when the tornado siren just about knocked me out of bed at 12:50 in the morning. Great. Hubby and I got the feline children in their kennels and got everyone downstairs pronto (we're getting really good at this and so are the cats). We had just turned on the television to see what was going on when the power went out. Fortunately we have plenty of flashlights and we pretty much sat in the dark, listening to my old Y2K wind up radio until the all clear sounded. At that point we tried to go back to sleep but still didn't have any power. Our power came on around 4:15, so I was one of the lucky ones.
By the time I headed to school around 6:15, it was barely light enough to see that there were a lot of trees down, street signs and stop signs laying flat on the ground, and debris all over the roads. The traffic lights were out as well, which made it a bit dicey getting to school as some people don't seem to get a clue that when there's no traffic light, every intersection is considered a four way stop. Surprisingly, when I got to The School, we actually had power.
We were one of the lucky ones. Apparently power was out all over the county, including at a great many of our schools. The high school down the road from us was dark, and there probably were only a handful of functioning traffic lights throughout the entire county. Most of the kids rolled off the buses bleary eyed. Half the staff didn't have power. (There were some unusual color combinations and outfits spotted among staff and students, the result of getting dressed in the dark.) By the time school started I was thanking my lucky stars that I actually had power since it appeared I was one of the fortunate few
As luck would have it, with so many schools without power (and with not good time frame from when they'd get power), the District decided to call it a day and pick everyone up and send everyone home. Thankfully we won't have to make this day up (we're still making up time from our snow days this winter). The seventh grade teachers - for once - got the best of this deal as our planning is 1st and 2nd period and they sent the kids home before 3rd.
The forecast for the upcoming week pretty much indicates thunderstorms for the next five days. It's Easter Sunday today and it's already rained 1.7" in my yard and still coming down. I'm starting to worry a bit as we're coming up on the anniversary of The Flood we had last year that many people are still recovering from.But they say a flood like that comes along every 500 years....right.
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