~:: Blizzard ::~

I woke up an hour and a half (at least) before my time this morning, straight out of a dream of twisters.  Somebody had said, “LOOK!” And we ran out of the house and looked up, only to watch the sky, a mass of lowering cloud,  just beginning that ponderous whirlpool spin, right above us.  I was nearly sitting up in bed when I came awake, heart pounding.  We have no basement.  And a picture I had seen on the news the other day showed a house twice our size, completely reduced to its foundation – the only discernable feature the long open rectangle hole in the floor that led to the basement.  I spent the next hour tossing and turning, trying to work out what we would DO –

I suppose this dream came of that.  Why do I watch the news?  And because of a fairly spectacular series of shots Donna Lohr took yesterday in the parking lot of her school.  I prefer a sky that does not suddenly start spouting personality.

I lived in Missouri.  From a child, I lived in terror of twisters.  I remember the terrifying thunder one Easter Eve as we huddled in my grandmother’s basement.  Maybe it was all worse because we were there, in a place I had always thought of as the most peaceful of all places.  We had the radio on, and they were reporting constantly on the location of the twisters – as though these things were alive and stalking the city.

They happen here only rarely.  But still – as I said – we have no basement.

I had awakened several times last night anyway, distressed that we were supposed to have a front move in, bringing a couple of inches of snow.  I’d fed the horses for it like I was fattening turkeys, and every time I woke last night was listening for the wind.

But it never came.  When I got up from the dream, the world looked a little wet and chill, but the sky was spring blue, laced with puffy, low clouds, and I got into my pasture suit happily, thinking we’d dodged the bullet.

I opened the front door on a peaceful morning.

And then, as I stepped onto the front deck, a flake fell.  Just a single flake.  I thought maybe it wasn’t really a flake at all.  Looked like a cherry blossom petal.  Then there was another one.  In the time it took between the second step from my door and me getting into the Suburban—parked just as the end of the short drive—the world had gone from still and blue to raging wind and horizontal, driving snow.

I was astounded.

I drove through the stuff – turned west on Center – and there was the blue sky, still ringed with its low interesting clouds – but it was so covered with that hoard of horizontal snow, it looked like an invasion of tiny locusts – the very air had turned gray and thick with the moving points, with the sky still blue somewhere behind it all.  You know how they take those shots from above in Africa of the mass of migrating birds, all moving together like the very crust of the earth has broken to moving bits?  Yeah.  Kind of like that, except up.

The horses were not thrilled.  I got there just in time to save Zion from the Shark Horse, who stopped in mid stride at the sound of my voice.  Maybe I shouted with the voice of a twister.

Anyway, whatever – the second I opened the front gate, coming home, the wind dropped and the snow stopped.  Now, what am I supposed to conclude from that?

Like I’m even TEMPTED to go out again today –