Day of Doldrums, 3rd of Spring, 525 M.E. (Deneb): The severe weather system that spawned tornadoes and thunderstorms across the Midwest passed through here (Atlanta) last night. The storm, which had killed a total of at least 36 people, was part of a huge cross-country system that dropped hail as large as baseballs and produced tornadoes. The system also caused wildfires driven by hurricane-force winds, and dust storms that led to crashes that killed at least 13 people in Kansas, Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle.

It passed over my house a little after midnight last evening with loud thunder, spectacular lightening, and whipping winds, but was over in a matter of minutes. Rain and high winds still persisted for several more hours, but nothing more dramatic than the higher end of our usual thunderstorms.

The storm had me spooked. Not only am I still PTSD'd from the tree that fell on my house during Hurricane Zeta in October 2020, but I've seem many other trees fall on other houses both before and after that. The forecasters were warning of the kind of storm seen "once in a lifetime" and even confirmed that one tornado had touched down about 20 miles from here, although its track passed northwest of me.

I prepped for this storm. I put fresh batteries in my flashlights, gathered together all my candles, and filled jugs and containers with several gallons of water. The main bath is the interior-most room in my basement-less house and I figured I might be spending the night in the tub, so I set up several candles in there and made sure a lighter was right next to them. A waterless bath by candlelight.  How romantic.

I even turned my car around in the driveway in case I needed to make a rapid escape without the time needed to turn around later. While I was doing the later, my next-door neighbors saw me and invited me to ride out the storm with them and some friends of theirs in their basement. I took them up on the offer.

The power went out around 12:30 am, but not because of the usual fallen trees but a power surge that blew at least three transformers. We watched and saw the flash of sparks and heard the loud booms as they went off in sequence, one, two, three. 

But as I said before, the storm quickly settled down, although the rain and some wind continued. I was back home by 2:00 am, and the power came back on by 5:30 am.

So things are rarely as bad as our imagination makes it. But that doesn't mean that bad things don't sometimes happen. It's just that we imagine them more.