Tuesday, July 12, 2011

This is Not a Test (exactly)

The civil defense sirens started blaring around 10:15 p.m. Sunday night. The boyz and I had already been in bed for about an hour (yes I'm a cranky old man who tries to get in bed by 9 p.m. most nights). I grabbed my iPhone to see what was going on and saw that our city was under a severe thunderstorm warning due to a storm system that had heavy rains and strong winds (gusts up to 75 mph).

I turned on the TV and saw there were blobs of bright orange and yellow on the radar. I'm no meterologist but have learned in general terms that bright colors on a weather radar usually are not a good thing. I took a quick inventory of the boyz and saw all three sleeping in various locations in the bedroom (our bedroom is upstairs).

Over the years I've tried to teach the boyz our severe weather protocol- going down to the basement of the house. This has been met with varying success since each of the boys tends to run upstairs under the bed when they have a concern. This time I decided I would go downstairs and turn on the TV without trying to herd the boyz since I looked outside and it was only lightly raining.

Sure enough, Theo followed me down probably thinking food was a possibility. I watched the TV weather report for a while when I lost my TV signal as the lightning was lighting up the sky at a specatular if somewhat frightening rate. When I shut the TV off I noticed all three of the boyz were nearby looking at me. I guess the combination of thunder and lightning, and this strange deviation from our normal sleep routine got their attention. Thankfully the storm blew by without causing any damage.

2 comments:

Shaggy and Scout said...

No sirens out here in Maple Grove, but we got the vivid lightning and pretty heavy rain.
That's pretty cool they followed you, what ever the reason. They knew something was up.

The Island Cats said...

You have those boys trained well. We're glad you're all safe and sound.