Stormy weather & tornado safety tips

I don't know how things have played out where y'all are, but we've had some pretty nasty weather around here lately.

Last week Friday, I looked out the window around 4pm to see an almost pitch-black sky. A co-worker commented that the dark sky behind all of the tall buildings made things look like a scene out of Ghostbusters. Trey called me to say that his store had lost power, and they were experiencing what had to be 60 mph winds. Then the skies opened up. I was seriously concerned, so I gave my boss some safety tips (she and I were the only ones left here) and got very little work done for the rest of the day.

On that note, here's a safety tip: if you're ever in a modern high-rise building, the safest place to go in the event of an emergency like a tornado will be the stairwell. You're away from glass, and modern stairwells are highly reinforced.

Anyway, things had calmed down considerably by the time I left at 5, but the storm itself left downed trees all over Chicagoland and lots of people without power. Tony lost power, and as of Sunday it still hadn't come back on.

Then yesterday was another great day. I had a 7pm rehearsal, which meant I had to leave work by about 6:10. I figured I'd leave a half hour earlier and spend some extra time walking, but decided to do otherwise when I looked out the window and saw the downpour. I figured that by 30 minutes later, things would be relatively ok. Not so much.

I left at 6:10 with rain still coming down in sheets. On my 10 minute walk to the El, my skirt & the bottom of my shirt were both soaked, and my little umbrella allowed for water to drip in between my back and backpack - it was like taking a shower and having my clothes washed at the same time. I realized halfway through my walk that the tornado sirens had been going off the entire time - I'm so used to ambulance sirens that I didn't think anything of them initially, until I realized that they'd been going off continually. At that point I was only 5 minutes away from the subway so I just kept going, but it was still a little freaky.

On that note, another safety tip: if you're in a city walking around outside and tornado sirens go off, go down into to the subway if you're close to a station.

In any case, I'm just about done with rain and storms for the year. Today we have sunshine, but it looks like we'll have thunderstorms again just in time for the weekend...