We did almost lose a wading pool once, though.

Last night we got another big lightening and thunderstorm. Why do these storms (our 3rd biggie of the summer) never come in the afternoon? Why always at 1am? Leah must have some input on that, since she's decided she's afraid of thunder and must sleep with Mom when a storm hits. I think she just likes the cuddling and can't sleep, but who am I to argue?


When any severe weather hits these days, I find myself getting a jolt of adrenaline, and not because I have dreams of being a storm chaser.


It's because I grew up on a farm.


This farm is in western North Dakota, where mild weather is an unheard of thing. It's never rather warm - it's sweltering. It's never dryish - it's parched. It's never kinda wet - it's sopping. It's never cool - it's chilly. And that's just the summer! The amount of perfect summer weather can be measured in hours, usually between 6 and 8 in the morning.


During the time I lived on the farm, the area was experiencing a drought. For about five years, the rain was so minimal that the garden was constantly being watered by us, not nature, and there were actual prairie fires. You know, like in Little House on the Prairie. That we beat out with towels. (Nevermind that they were usually lit by a spark from our burning garbage. Just as scary, my friends!)

Because the house is about a century old and of course has no air conditioning, the windows were almost always strategically open.

The few times it rained, it never sprinkled - it downpoured. And so the cry would go out from my mom: "Shut all the windows! Get the laundry in!" and all four of us would fly out of the living room where we were slavishly watching TV reruns and slam the wood frames shut, and then run out to yank the jeans and towels (and undies, and socks...) off the clothesline and into baskets to haul into the house.

At least once we got hit with a huge windstorm, in which we added to that list of emergency precautions: grab everything that isn't nailed down, or it'll end up in the next county.

Hail added another dimension: nothing to do but survey the damage afterwards. Farmers dread hail like no other weather induced failure - with a drought, you KNOW the crops will be poor. But hail takes an otherwise promising yield and pulverizes it in mere minutes.

Aaron sometimes wonders, when it starts raining really hard, why I whip my head around to the windows, even though we usually have them shut to preserve the precious air conditioning. If only he could see the list in my head: Do plants need to be brought in? Is there anything outside that shouldn't be? Is everything secured?

And of course, because we are city folk, the answers are usually: No. No. Yes.

**************************************************

Any memories of severe summer weather? Thankfully we never had a tornado that I remember - but we may have been down in the basement a few times.