Scary Weather

Tonight, the tornado sirens keep up an intermittent wail.  Weather warnings blare across the bottom of the TV screen.  It's scary weather tonight.  It's certainly not the worst I've ever seen but you keep one ear tuned for that approaching freight train, which does cause difficulty since we live less than 1/4 a mile from a very busy train track (like every 15 minutes or so busy).  I wonder if we'd know the difference.  I remember as a kid, the bad weather nights where my Dad would go out and scan the western sky.  We never had to scramble to interior rooms.  Perhaps I was a braver kid, because there was a night about 7 years ago where I slept in the bathtub of my apartment (the farthermost interior room I had) fully clothed.  You know if I'd put my pjs on the tornado would have come and swept away my belongings, forcing me to give a national TV news interview in my flannel jammies.  The only actual touchdown we've had in Chattanooga happened about 12 years ago.  I was in college and my parents were visiting me on my Mom's spring break from teaching.  I had joined them at the Hampton Inn for breakfast.  We were watching Good Morning America when the story came on.  My parents left napkins hanging in the air they shot from the room so fast.  I watched the coverage and they called my grandparents (this was pre-wide spread cell phone usage days).  Our place was fine, but we picked up Christmas decorations and bills carried on the wind out of the fields for several weeks afterwards.  It's weird to have such weather in January, right on the heals of our other weird weather of freezing temps for 2 weeks.  I guess we can thank global warming for that.