Sirens’ Call To Action (101)

A sure sign of spring has arrived in the Midwest.

Yes, friends, it’s tornado season.  Not that any time of year can be ruled out, but when spring tries to confront winter and give birth to a warm, humid atmosphere, the birth pains often result in rough weather.

We spent about an hour of quality time with the cat in the basement yesterday evening.  Fortunately our basement is pseudo fixed up making the stay not too unpleasant.  The only unpleasant part, in fact, was the worry that when we opened the door to the upstairs, the house would be missing.  Since we moved to St Louis about 20 years ago, we’ve experienced 3 way too close tornadoes including a very bad one in 2012 on April 28th.  That particular tornado came about a week following the disastrous Joplin, MO tornado that struck on April 22nd, resulting in the deaths of 156 people. That tornado is referred to as the ‘Good Friday’ one because it fell on a Good Friday but I call it the Earth Day tornado.  Good Friday moves around from year to year on the calendar, but Earth Day maintains its date.  There were several stories on the local news in the past few weeks commemorating the anniversary of the Joplin tornado.  Well intentioned but they have the date wrong.  I wonder if the media people were afraid to be considered politically incorrect if they named a ‘bad’ manifestation of Mother Nature after Earth Day.

Back to the original story now.  I’ve always been one to pay attention to the warning sirens except for a few years ago when they were sounding too frequently.  St Louis County weather warners decided to sound the sirens if there was a tornado sighted in any surrounding county. There are nine counties bordering St Louis County and only 3 of them usually end up sending weather our way.  The prevailing winds here are west to east and tornadoes typically come from just south west of St Louis County.  Instead of sounding the alarm when a tornado was spotted south west or in the county itself, they were sounding for all directions.  In the spring and summer when weather is volatile, the alarms could be going every day.  People (not just me) stopped paying attention.

What I do trust more than the sirens to give me a warning to hit the basement, is our current cat. We’ve had cats in the past that had no sense of what to do in danger, especially during bad weather. For some reason, they usually wanted to dash outside and crouch under a bush. If they could sneak out through an open door, they would get by quickly and I had no way of catching them. Plus, although I am a huge lover of pets and all animals, I am not crazy enough to go out in hail or pouring rain when the clouds are starting to swirl overhead. Visions of Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz have haunted me since childhood.

Anyway, our current cat was a foundling like all the other pets we have owned. She has been a member of our family through two of the close calls we’ve had with tornadoes and she seems to have the perfect sense of what to do and where to go. At the first sign of a thunder storm, she will edge her way to the kitchen and sit close to the basement door. When the thunder gets close or the wind picks up enough to make some noise, she moves to the top step of the basement stairs and peeks around the corner. A little closer or louder, she moves to the 3rd step down from the top. When it gets real noisy, she goes all the way downstairs. Finally, if there really is a tornado within a mile or two, she goes to the back of the basement, under the stairs and screams. It’s a terrible sound, and that doesn’t even half describe it, but way more telling than the tornado sirens and a very efficient warning system for us. I love that cat.

I don’t look forward to tornado season but I truly love and welcome spring. It seems like we can’t enjoy the beauty of the rebirth of nature without going through some turbulence. So, bring it on. We’re ready. Siren is in place and all is well.