Tornado warnings, power, fear, intution...

Tweet

As most of my friends on here know - I’m absolutely terrified of tornadoes and the bad storms that go with it. For those of you who don’t I’ll touch on just how bad it is before I go on. When I was working - I’d call if bad weather was threatening, I’d have full blown panic attacks, I wake up family members in the middle of the night during storms if I’m home alone because I’m scared, and was just completely irrational right before a storm would hit and during it. This fear goes back from middle school when I became scared of them all of a sudden and without reason. I’d have my older cousin check me out from school if the sky got dark even. My school counselor told me I should learn about them - because that helps people a lot of times to learn about their fears. Well that just made it worse because the more I learned the more I became afraid due to the completely unpredictable nature of tornadoes. Last night our area was one of the MANY that was hit hard by storms. I'd been keeping up with the weather channel which was predicting we might be getting some nasty storms for about two days before they hit. Yesterday morning I could see it was almost certain we'd be getting some based on what they were saying. But I want to start with last weeks bad storms that impacted several states in the US. Well with that said last week I the wind and rain woke me up (we sleep during second shift/evening hours) and I knew we might get some bad storms so I got up to check on it. Well I checked my email first because I’m on the mailing list for severe weather with our local TV stations website. I had no emails so I figured - no biggie. I sat there for a bit and then went onto weather.com to check out the radar to see if anymore storms where coming. That’s where I seen that we did indeed have a warning - a TORNADO warning. So I go turn on the TV to see where in the county the tornado is suppose to be located and to see if we need to go to the basement. I was COMPLETELY CALM during this entire time - but I was concerned of course. I seen my mother-in-law had called and left me messages about the storms coming and the warning so I called her back while I was trying to figure out where the tornado was and where it was heading. Well by the time I’d woke up and did all that that particular radar indicated tornado had moved on - but had gotten really close to my town. Well as I was watching the news and talking to my mother-in-law we got issued another tornado warning. And I’m still calm as can be. I didn’t freak out and go get the hubby up because my instincts was telling me all was okay. So I just waited and watched to see if the tornado was heading this way (because a lot of the time they’ll issue them right before the storm gets to the county). Well after a few minutes they said where it was going and it wasn’t heading close to us but in a different direction. So I just waited out the storms and went back to bed - calm as could be. I was so PROUD of myself!!!! I have NEVER been that calm and collected during a storm since middle school (and before that I didn’t pay much attention to them). Fast forward to this week… Well my hubby had taken off Sunday & Monday nights (for the Super Bowl and an extra day) and was suppose to go back to work last night. When we finally laid down about 5pm yesterday I was so anxious about the weather we might get after he left for work and I'd be home alone. I was wanting him to stay home something awful...just this awful feeling in my stomach - you know? BUT where I am so terrified of storms it's often hard to tell which is my fear and which is intuition. And it’s not like I could ask my hubby to call in this early in the year and ask him to give up another vacation day (he wouldn‘t have anyway because of my fear of storms….it drives him batty LOL). So as we laid in bed I prayed all would go well and turn out okay for everyone. I sent up protection prayers…the works. Yet I just couldn’t get that anxiety out of me and I could tell it was different from the usually fear anxiety I usually get right before it’s suppose to storm bad. My hubby couldn’t sleep and got back up with in I’d say a half hour to and hour later. And I shortly followed him. I tried to sleep but the anxiety was just too much. I asked him shortly after I got up if he was going to call in - because it was obvious he wasn’t got to be getting sleep. He said pretty much said yes. I felt so RELIEVED!! The anxiety was gone at once. So I kept an ‘eye on the sky’ throughout the night and seen warnings popping up left and right. I was concerned but I was still calm. My sister-in-law called twice - once to make sure I knew what was going on with the weather (she’s scared of them too but she’s worse than I am - which is saying something) and then the other was to let me know we had a tornado watch. I had known that for hours though LOL - even about 5 - 10 minutes before our local news station listed it because I was getting my information from the weather channel directly. But I had let her know that my hubby (her brother) was home so I was okay. {When I’m in panic mode I talk to anyone answers the phone - it’s the only thing that remotely helps.} About midnight our power starts trying to go out. It’d flickered; it’d go off, come back on and did this for about 3 minutes. At this time the wind wasn’t even blowing yet - the storm was still about 30 - 45 minutes away. {I just want to add that I freak out when the power goes out - esp. when it storms and at night when you can’t see what’s going on outside or get any info from the news.} When it first threatened to go out I got our flash lights and then when they went out the last time I got a couple of candles and lit them. Well after pacing for a bit and battling with myself about getting our pet taxi ready, shoes by the door, and keys ready - incase we had to go to basement (which we have to go outside to get to) I finally trusted myself and went into ‘just in case mode’. Normally I would have already acted but I was trying to resist my normal irrational fears LOL - but decided that it was intuition instead of my normal fear. After I did that I decided I sent a text to my sister-in-law (who by the way lives 10-20 miles away in our neighboring town) about us not having power so she could call us if our county was issued any warnings. She ended up calling me because she had no power either! Apparently we’re on the same grid (or something) because our power and acted the same and went out at the same time. So she was going to contact her friend who lives in Louisville (about 45 minutes from here) to see if she had power to let us know what’s going on in our counties. Luckily she did and my sister-in-law called me back a few minutes later telling us we both had tornado warnings. I got off the phone - got my half asleep and reluctant hubby off the couch to get us into the basement with our cats. Once the warning was lifted we came back up stairs. At 6:30am we finally got our power back. We learned of the damage to the high school and the road it’s on - that’s about 2 miles from my hubby’s factory. There was much more damage too throughout the town surrounding ones too. According to the news tonight there were 2 confirmed tornadoes (one where the school is) just outside of Elizabethtown (where my hubby works and sister in law & mother in law lives). Plus the ENTIRE city of Elizabethtown and several surrounding areas - us being one - had lost power. I am so thankful though that my hubby had called in. I would have been a wreck during all that without him and worrying about him. Not just during the actual storm but afterwards without power the rest of the night?! And what’s more is I think that my fear seems to FINALLY be getting into check! I don’t know what’s changed but…I won’t complain either LOL. Anyone else want to share your stories about the crazy weather last night? Where you all lucky or did you suffer damage? Or even any stories about fears like mine and suddenly they seem to get better? I hope everyone is okay and loved ones are all safe. And for everyone else - you’ve got my condolences.