Weather...

I love thunderstorms. They fascinate me and there is nothing like the smell of rain! As a child, storms scared me, like most kids. As some point, however, my outlook changed. I believe it was after I moved to Nebraska. Storms happen often here, and they can be bad. It would have been 2004, when a tornado hit the Fairfield area and Clay Center area. It happened over Memorial weekend. We had left town to attend a graduation in Colorado. We were headed to Imperial first to get my parents. That was the longest drive ever. Literally, every time we would decide we could leave a car wash (for cover) and continue our drive, they would come on the radio and say you do not want to be on HWY 4 between blank and blank. That was exactly where we were each time. At one point the sky was green and all the sudden, (after an announcement we should not be exactly where we were) a huge gust of wind came up and our Yukon was suddenly pushed back and over to the side a bit. Once we got to McCook, the sirens were going. Like I said, it was a long trip. Upon arriving in Imperial, phone calls were made back here. Turns out, tornadoes went through and when we got home, there was some major cleanup to attend to. The things you find in a field left behind... it's amazing. It is also not fun to cleanup, so much stuff everywhere. We spent a few days walking out fields looking for and picking up debris. I believe it was also that year we were standing outside at the farm, when we heard Fairfield's sirens go off. We decided to take a drive and see where the tornado was. We got about a mile down the road when we came across a neighbor. That is when we discovered the tornado was south of us and you could see it. It was still probably 15 miles away but it was quite a sight. I would say it was after cleaning up debris and seeing a tornado on its journey, I was no longer afraid. Fascination took over. This past Wednesday, I was able to attend Severe Weather Training at the Clay County Fairgrounds. Mike Moritz was our "teacher". The class was very informative and interesting. I learned a lot of new things. I can now be a "spotter." I attended the training with Ashley. After speaking with her prior to the training, we decided that would not be enough. I placed a phone call to Mike Moritz at the National Weather Service in Hastings and stayed for a while to check out the radar. Maybe we will get lucky and have a storm roll through while we are there! Side Note: On a completely different note... I had a few local events to attend this past weekend. My column was brought up at one of the events. I made the comments there are times I really struggle with what to write. Someone asked me if I ever get tired of attending all these events. I just had to laugh inside, as that was basically what my last column was about. Feeling like a broken record... I'm still trying to get out of that rut...