Becoming a storm chaser for a night
Living in Texas is not for the weak of stomach.
Sure, property is cheap there.
Sometimes, you go to Buc-ee's for gas, a Slurpee, and some Venison jerky. When you walk outside, you realize the clerk stuffed the title to a giant ranch right under your armpit.
That's how cheap property is in Texas.
But if you don't have that cowboy mettle, don't even think about it.
If you ask Texans if they have ever been in a tornado path or close to one, they will gravely tell you, "Never!" If they think about it a bit more, then they'll say there was that one time, but that was years ago, and it has never happened since.
Don't believe them!
They have grown desensitized to tornado warnings and alarms.
Since my family moved in 2017, I have been close to a tornado at least twice. That's not a lot, but remember, I don't live in Texas; I just visit it often. Besides, twice is way more than an actual Texan would agree they've been close to a tornado.
The last time I was in one, I came close to dying.
A tornado went by fifteen minutes' drive away from my sister, too close for my comfort. One slight change of direction, and I would've been flying with Dorothy. That's to say, Toto and I would've landed back in Kansas.
Of course, I would not have ever known how close I came to dying had my sister not tried to kill me first
As I was getting ready for bed in my sister's guest room, I faced a decision: to pack and get ready to leave the next morning or to go to sleep, wake up early, and pack then.
I was exhausted.
I could've easily gone to sleep then. But decided against it. And stayed up to pack. That simple decision saved my life because as I was folding shirts, I could smell a faint chemical smoke scent.
I walked out of the room and alarmed Rosy and her family, who were also getting ready to close their eyes.
We ran downstairs to find smoke coming out of Rosy's oven.
I don't know if you ever used the self-cleaning tab in your oven. If you haven't, don't. It will do everything in its power to kill you!
My sister hosted our family after our little brother's high school graduation. Before leaving, my mom and aunt observed the dismal state of Rosy's oven grease buildup.
My mom said, "Just use Easy-Off." My aunt said, "Use the self-cleaning tab." I said, "Tell your cleaning lady to use elbow grease."
As is typical with younger siblings, my sister ignored my advice, combined my aunt's and my mom's, and nearly killed me and her entire family of four.
Rosy, tired from hosting, cleaned the stove with Easy-Off, then hit self-cleaning and forgot she had left three pots inside, and one of them was full of reused oil.
She did not know this, which is typical for people who don't know about the self-cleaning option, but the oven locks, heats up until eight hundred degrees, and obliterates all grease and things in the oven by turning them into ashes and then burning those ashes too.
Luckily, my hound nose alerted me to the danger before it was too late, and I evacuated the family just in time.
When we walked outside, it was still hot and humid, pouring rain and lightning like crazy, but still way too hot and humid.
That's when we heard them.
The sirens alerted people that the tornado was coming.
It was surreal to see my sister and my niece in their pajamas, my brother-in-law and my nephew in their calzoncillos, or undies, basking around their backyard, trying to find the best place to spot some lightning.
As we walked around, my sister told me to pay attention to where I was stepping because I could be stepping on a copperhead head.
She laughed, trying to make it clear she was joking, but just earlier in the evening, I heard my mom tell her how her neighbor had already found two that week in her backyard.
We kept trying to come back in, but the smoke was still going, and we were figuring out how to use the manufacturer reset in between breaks for fresh air, since our eyes were burning from the chemical smoke bomb my sister had created.
She finally pulled the breaker on it, and the stove turned off. But it was still locked, and we had to wait until all the smoke dissipated.
So we sat on the patio furniture to wait to the background of lighting and alarms blaring.
While sitting there, Samu, my brother-in-law, told me to look for a storm chaser on YouTube. The search engine came back with several results, and Samu told me his favorite, Ryan Hall, from the channel "Ryan Hall, Y'all."
Ryan and people like Ryan spend these weather events analyzing data in real-time to help people make decisions regarding shelter or evacuations.
Once I had found Ryan, it did not leave my palm. I spent the following two hours listening to the reports regarding the PDS weather event, which I found stands for "Particularly Dangerous Situation."
That night, I, too, became a storm chaser, if only virtually. I saw Ryan read the weather from the satellite, and he called tornadoes before officials did. I was mesmerized as he went back and forth between dangerous storms in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. But, of course, there is no such thing as climate change.
We were finally able to walk back into the room, and as we were getting ready to go to sleep, I asked my sister and her husband, "Where is your tornado shelter?" They laughed me out of the room. From the door, I followed up with, "If you hear the warnings to take shelter, don't leave me behind." Which was followed by even more laughter.
I can only imagine what they would have done if I had asked the question I wanted to ask: "Where do you keep your tornado helmets?" According to my friend and tornado spiritual guide, Ryan Hall, often people survive tornados only to come out and have shit land on their heads.
I went to bed but decided not to sleep in the guest bedroom. I could still smell the faint scent of the chemical bomb, so I put a pillow and blanket down in my sister's media room, which had more ventilation.
I'm not going to lie; I went to bed having little hope for my sister and her family to make it through the night.
I knew it would've been inconvenient if the carbon monoxide got to them, but I also knew that my mom, who lives five minutes away, would've come to pick me up and take me to the airport.
Against my predictions, my sister's family made it through the night and woke early to take me to the airport. While driving, she asked me, "Do you think I need to get rid of the pots I left in the oven?"
I contemplated her question, "I know. It's a real dilemma. Do you waste the $10 that is going to take you to replace all that in Walmart, or do you risk stomach cancer? Decisions. Decisions."
As I was making it through the security line, I took a deep breath of relief and felt the constraint of my constricted lungs. I pulled out my wallet to show my ID to the TSA agent, and that's when I saw Justine's ID left there from the last time we traveled together.
She was lucky nothing happened to me because if I had died in Dallas as the state of Texas had intended, then Justine would've had to go to the DMV.
What a bummer!
Responses