Tornado Warnings in NY??? (and Memories of Tornadoes in Kansas)

The day was mostly sunny and gorgeous yesterday while i sewed on the porch. But, in the late afternoon, dark clouds started rolling in...

(forgive the blurry photo. I took it with my phone and the focus isn't working right for some reason)

I kept expecting it to storm, but it didn't rain until just before CJ came home around 5:30, and then it downpoured. It only rained for a short time, but in that short time, the power went out in the whole town. We suspect that the wind blew a tree down into a power line or something. So, we decided to go into Medina for dinner. By the time we came home, the power was back on.

I heard there were tornado watches and warnings for Western NY, but they weren't near us. (I suspect we somehow have living so close to Lake Ontario to thank for that) Thank goodness! Living in Kansas in my childhood has made me really freaked out by tornadoes. I checked out some news articles on my phone while we were at the diner, and just the tornado precautions (ie: the safest place to be is in a basement, stay away from windows, etc) gave me anxious shivers because I remember all of the "what do do when a tornado is coming" stuff from childhood.

Of course, I know I shouldn't worry. God will take care of me (He has so far!) and whatever happens is His will.

*FYI: A tornado WATCH is when the weather conditions make a tornado likely. A tornado WARNING is when a tornado has actually been sighted. Watches don't scare me...warnings do!

But the funny thing is that the house we lived in in Kansas didn't have a proper basement...all it had was a crawlspace with a dirt floor! But when a tornado watch was in effect, friends of ours from church, who had a finished basement, would call us (knowing we had nothing but that crawlspace) and say "Tornado party at our house!" with the husband in the background, yelling, "Bring food!"

I never really saw a tornado, but I saw the damage that they did and saw the videos on the news. There was a big Tornado in 1991 in Wichita (not far from where I lived) that ripped through the Air Force base that my Dad worked at. It missed all the planes and weapons, but it demolished the base hospital where my mom worked (neither of my parents were there at the time). There is a video that a guy who lived in the barracks took of the tornado. It sticks in my mind (y'know...besides the tornado being SO CLOSE!) because you can hear a guy in the background yell "My car!!!" (skip to 2:21 on the YouTube video to hear it.) FYI: There's also a lot of swearing in the video (y'know...young, gutter-mouthed, military guys)...which I don't remember hearing as a kid, but I always saw it on TV, so all the cursing was edited out. Just watching it makes me tear up, thinking how terrifying being that close to it must be.

And the day before yesterday marked 20 years since it happened. I was 8 years old.