Today I am thankful for Mother Nature’s favor.

11.29.19

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The weather forecast was calling for a massive rainstorm Thanksgiving night and into the day on Friday. We Arizonans always get excited about a good rainstorm, so I was actually kind of disappointed when Thursday produced absolutely no rain and when I went to bed in the wee hours of the morning after a bit of Black Friday shopping, a single raindrop had yet to fall. It was windy, but dry.

I was awakened to the emergency alert sound on my phone about 4 a.m. this morning. From my cozy bed I could hear the rain falling and the wind whirring outside. I recognized the sound, but figured it was just a flash flood alert. We get those almost every time it rains here in the desert. I rolled back over without looking at the alert. The alert sounded a second time. I was slightly more awake by this point and a bit more aware that my whole house seemed to be rattling with the wind. I read the alert and was shocked to find that my neighborhood was under a tornado warning.

This never happens in Arizona. Never. We don’t practice tornado warnings in school. We don’t have tornado sirens throughout the city like they do in other parts of the country. We don’t even have basements.

My inner Midwesterner kicked in immediately. I jumped out of bed, put on my tennis shoes, grabbed my dog, and went into the bathroom in the middle of the house.

Thankfully, the tornado warning was short lived and 20 minutes later I was back in my cozy bed, fairly certain that I had imagined the whole thing.

The next morning I surveyed the damage, which thank goodness, was minimal. Some shrubbery in my yard took a pretty bad beating and my garbage cans had tipped over and spilled their contents throughout the yard, but I was pretty unaffected by the storm.

It wasn’t until I saw the morning news that I realized how bad the damage really was just miles from my house. Tonight at game night, some friends showed me pictures of the damage from their neighborhood – humongous trees uprooted right down the street from them, huge buckles in the sidewalk the size of their 10 year old. Geesh! Thankfully no one was injured and no homes were destroyed.

From the looks of it, the country has been hit pretty hard this holiday weekend with various forms of weather. I pray that you all are safe and sound and warm and dry. We often take these things for granted in Arizona, but today I am extra thankful for such blessings.