The Weather Notebook: When Skies Grow Dark

Hi I'm Dave Thurlow. Sometimes when fierce weather approaches, there's nothing left to do but pray.

"When Mama came down to Atlanta to visit us, I was hoping the weather would stay nice while she was here - but I wasn't worried.

Weather Notebook commentator Larry Wilkerson.

NOAA Photo Library, NSSL Collection: Photo: C. Clark

I remember her first night here last Spring: A storm had been brewing all evening, and by midnight, the sky was black as ink and lightning was flashing a hundred times a minute.

Then came the bulletin: Funnel clouds in Gwinnett County, where we live. I shook Mama and my wife and little girl awake and hurried them downstairs. With the wind roaring and the windows rattling, Mama started praying, the way she'd prayed her way through a thousand bad storms back home in Kentucky. Maybe it wasn't a tornado that hit our neighborhood - some say it was only wind shear, but it was fierce, whatever it was.

At daybreak, I went outside expecting to find siding and shingles in our yard, but the wind had only scattered some branches and turned over a couple of deck chairs.

Just up the street, though, tall, thick pines had been snapped and neighbors' roofs had been ripped away. Over on Old Peachtree Road, a poultry barn was flattened, and a pontoon boat was flipped over.

'Thank the lord,' Mama said. 'We were spared.'

Nobody got hurt, but we can't enjoy the sweet side of spring around here now without remembering the tornado or wind shear or whatever it was, and dreading storm season more than we used to.

Nearly everybody keeps a weather radio handy, and some folks have concrete shelters to go to on nights like that. The lucky ones, like me, have mamas who know how to do the only thing that's left to do, when the wind roars and the windows rattle."

Larry Wilkerson is a columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Weather Notebook is underwritten by Subaru with major support provided by the National Science Foundation.