Mid West Storms give me Anxiety – Can I Adapt?

Last night at 1:28am my weather alarm went off:

"This is a weather service announcement for the surrounding areas of Ogden, Boone, Perry, and Woodward. Storm has been located to produce Severe thunderstorms with an excess of 60+ mph winds, large hail, and torrential downpours. Please  move to a sound location away from windows and moving objects. This service announcement is in place until 2am for this area.”

Here we go again, this time instead of bolting to the basement I slowly got up, took Winston out of his kennel and decided to take a little tinkle before heading to the window to see how bad it was.

Before I could even finish the winds picked up and it sounded as if bowling balls were hitting the roof! The weather service was not kidding this time. I ran and grabbed my pillow off the bed and ran to the living room where I had left the windows opened hoping to wake up to the 52 degree morning they promised me. I closed the windows and couldn't believe my eyes, it was lighting so much that there was no pulse in between each bolt. It was like watching a strobe machine at a night club.

I took Winston to the basement and grabbed a blanket to camp out for the night. I could hear the winds whipping through the trees and against the house. There was still hail coming down pounding the ground. This went on for about 3 more minutes and then like nothing had even occurred there was silence….

WTF… is all I could think in my brain. I could still see through the small cracks in the basement windows that the lighting was still flickering like crazy but there was no thunder, winds, or hail any longer. I decided that it was already almost 2am and that I might as well sleep on the sofa in the basement with Winston curled up next to me. This way if another one came through I could at least be safe and sleep through it.

Today, I have gone through 3 cups of coffee and I am still exhausted. Will I ever get use to these storms? My anxiety hits an all time high when I start to see lighting out our windows at night. You just never know if it will pass or if its going to be a long night of worrying about if I should retreat to the basement.

Last night there was no talk on the news about storms coming through. This is what gets me the most… I need to be prepared.

People always ask, “Don’t you have storms back east in Delaware?”, and I reply, “Yes, but it’s not the same.”

I really don’t know how to explain this, storms back east are just not as intense. I feel like they are more predictable and when they say tornado warning, we take that Sh”t seriously and go to our basements. The worst storms are the Hurricanes and they are slow moving so the weather teams can show the path and project how severe they will be. I was never terrified of the storms… now I am.

Here, it’s hit or miss… maybe it will be bad… most likely not. It still scares the crappola out of me ever time.

It doesn’t help that our of the two nights G is gone this week one of the nights was really bad. Even if he was here we would’ve both been up heading for cover. I think even he gets a little un-nerved… but more so he just wants a sound sleep so these storms piss him off.

The outcome of last nights storm was we had no damage, just lots of leaves left to clean up and some large puddles.

Just another Mid West night I can add to the notch of sleepless nights huddled in the basement…