Let me back up a moment. I don't like severe weather. It's always scared the hell out of me, but at my house in Minneapolis, I could escape to the basement where I'd be reasonably safe. Then I moved to Georgia. For the first year and a half, I lived in a condo which (of course) had no basement. Neither of the houses I've lived in down here have had basements either.
But this story starts at the condo. I believe it was spring or early summer when the news showed some extremely strong storms headed my direction. I also learned that in Atlanta most of the tornadoes are "rain wrapped" and frequently come through at night.
I immediately bought a weather radio. My thought was if there was a tornado warning, it would wake me up and I could take shelter...somewhere.
The problem was that despite reading the directions, I was never able to figure out how to get the darn weather radio to actually work. I got used to it just sitting there, but despite moving twice since living in the condo, I kept plugging it in. I thought if nothing else, we could turn it on and find a radio station.
Imagine my surprise when shortly after I went to bed on the night of December 29th, I hear beeping and a voice. I jump out of bed and rush into the family room in time to hear the weather radio announce we were under a tornado watch until 5am.
A tornado watch. At the end of December!
It was warm here for December, but I didn't think it was anywhere close to warm enough to kick up a tornado. Also, when did this weather radio decide to start working? My dad said he didn't touch it and I hadn't touched it in forever, so ????
Anyway, no tornado drama overnight. In fact, I didn't even hear it thunder loudly, just some rumbling off in the distance, and as lightly as I sleep, any storm (or even hard rain) would wake me up.
Then, the next day, the weather radio issues another loud alert. Severe thunderstorm warning. Again, didn't turn out to be that bad. And then it goes off again with a flash flood warning. I was like, I think I liked it better when this thing wasn't working.
