Recent storm warning brings stark realization

When I was younger, I was terrified of thunderstorms. If clouds on the horizon looked even a little dark, I’d be seized with gut-wrenching terror. I remember my parents giving me a read-along book and cassette tape —“I Can Read About Thunder and Lightning!”— which I would often pull out and read to my favorite stuffed animal whenever I heard a threatening rumble in the air.  Reading about something as it was happening helped me understand what I was afraid of, and it kept me from making myself sick with dread.

This began a period that lasted most of my childhood. I would visit the library and check out every book about storms and tornados that I could. The photos of what some tornados left behind perhaps gave me further reason to get nervous when weather started to turn, despite the fact that northern Illinois isn’t typically prone to such activity. Yet by the time I reached my teens, I found myself relishing the occasional thunderstorm and interpreting radar along with the local meteorologist’s live updates. Now I’m 20, and weather isn’t so scary to me anymore.

Tornados are the exception. I’m not particularly embarrassed by this.  Tornados are one of the freakiest and least-predictable things in the world. I’ll admit, when I was first considering going to school in South Dakota, the potential for a reenactment of “Twister” crossed my mind.  Thankfully, I haven’t had much to worry about until Oct. 4.

I check the weather every day — how else am I supposed to know what to wear in the fickle Midwest — so I knew we could be in for a bit of a bumpy ride. With an eye to the sky, I went about my day and was at ease when I returned to my empty apartment and decided to Skype my parents. After a while, I began noticing tornado watch bulletins popping up on KELOLAND. Not long after, the watches were replaced with warnings.

There have been plenty of things to adjust to in college, and watching weather is no exception.  Back home, the local station’s weather graphic is a map of just a few surrounding counties. Here in South Dakota, a map of the entire state is in the corner of the TV screen. As I saw tornado warnings for Knox, Cedar and Dixon counties, I realized I had no clue where those places were in relation to me. All I could gather from the radar was that the storm was moving north towards Vermillion, and I was all alone.

I won’t lie, I reverted back to the little girl who would run into Mom and Dad’s room when a thunderstorm came. Only this time Mom and Dad weren’t in the next room, or even the next state. Instead, they kept me company on Skype and helped me figure out which counties were nearest to me. As the report of a large and dangerous tornado just across the border in Nebraska came in, my parents asked if I had a place to go to be safe in a storm. I read the notice on the inside of our door to discover that our building doesn’t have its own shelter. We’re supposed to take cover in the building across the street. Somehow this did not make me feel better.

After almost an hour of a knotted stomach and nervously refreshing the online radar feed, it was clear that the storm would miss Vermillion as it headed toward Sioux City. Almost instantly I was myself again — marveling at the hook echo on the radar and hoping the people in the storm’s path were alright. A few minutes later, my roommates returned, and the storm was just a story to tell after a long day.

In college, students have to learn a lot of things, and some of them are more useful than others. Even as the seasons are changing and we’ll soon be more concerned with blizzards than tornados, I’d still suggest that it’s important to take note of your surroundings if you aren’t familiar with the Vermillion area. Even after two years in the area, I didn’t know more than the name of the county I live in for nine months at a time.  Make note of where you go in case of an emergency, and maybe glance at a map to see which counties serve as our dear Clay County’s neighbors.  If nothing else, it could keep you a little bit calmer if you’re bracing for storms on your own.