SEVERE!

Tuesday, we in Bermtopia did something that Bermtopians, young and old, EXCEL at.

We prepared for

SEVERE

WEATHER.

Snow. Blizzards. Ice storms. High winds. Dust storms. Fire storms. Thunderstorms. Heat waves. Arctic freezes.

You name the weather condition, we Bermtopians love weather when preceded by the word SEVERE, preferably all caps and bolded in RED. The means the Meteorological Genuises in our region are SERIOUS about things.

On Tuesday, the call was for SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS. An apocalyptic version to be precise:

Heavy rain! Flooding! Hail stones measured by the inch! Winds 45 to 60 miles an hour! Storm after storm!


All! Night! Long! 

By noon, the local news stations had blown through at least half their quota of exclamation points for the year.

As always, we Bermtopians do what we do best in terms of Preparing for SEVERE weather. Immediately cluster in small groups at the office and mull over The Situation, offering numerous invaluable, irrelevant opinions.

There is much thoughtful peering out the office windows searching for Impending Doom. One or two over-achievers are at their computers, surfing for up-to-the-date-end-of-the-world-bleats from the local Television Meteorological Geniuses, who are now perched precariously on windy bluffs and exposed prairie waiting for Armageddon.

I, in the face of imminent SEVERE thunderstorms, call to home: "Ummm, would you mind putting the potted plants in the garage? Sounds like we might get some hail."

I do hate shredded hosta leaves.

Yep. That's my hair-on-fire equivalent of the Depression-Era Hollywood farmer bellowing into gale-force winds: "Get the children in the root cellar, Mother! There's a twister a' comin', and by crackie, she looks to be somethin' orney!"

"Get back in the cellar, Jed! or you be blown five ways to Sunday!"

After stopping to secure the teepees for my nonexistent beans and cukes at When Pigs Fly Farm lest they blow away (the poles, not the nonexistent beans and cukes) and put out the eye of some poor unsuspecting orphan, I arrived home to wait out the worst.

We stood at the kitchen window that evening, waiting for a stormfall that had been dramatically dissected by the minute by the Meteorlogical Geniuses -- 6:45 p.m. West 30th. . . 7 p.m. West 29th. . . 7:16:15  p.m. The Nine-0ne-Four.

We knew exactly when the rain would fall, lightening strike and wind and hail annihilate life as we know it. And then. . . .

The apparent Rapture was heralded by one ceremoniously benign rumble of thunder. A cool breeze snuck through the window, freshening the house. And that was it.

Later, when we went to bed, there was nothing. . . . except the rain, tapping gently on the roof, all night long.