Tuesday, May 24, 2011, Fort Worth, Texas~
Dear Journal~
Steffi Sandusky here. Sorry if I haven't written. I hope you are okay. Between college courses and hiding from bad weather, I haven't really slept all that much lately; I'm getting past the point of exhaustion!
Today may be more bad weather, including the possibility of tornadoes. A dryline is expected to move through here, the same one that's been sloshing back and forth just west of here, giving us the threat of severe weather day after day after day before a cold front comes later on, driving it out of here. Then yesterday morning, we had a line of severe storms come through, but that was just what the weather people call an MCS (meso scale convective complex), and the skies remained black and mencacing for over an hour, before the rains came.
It was SCARY!!
After I had my classes, I and Tank would head over to a local hospital not too far from here and wait it out, either in the cafeteria downstairs on the gorund floor or the cardiac intensive care unit on the second (main) floor. We would sit for hours, waiting, waiting: you never knew when these storms would materialize.
Then seeing all the destruction that struck Joplin, Missouri, certainly didn't help. Over 100 people dead there, massive damage, including to the hospital there. When Tank and I saw that on the news, our hearts fell to our toes, because guess where we were at the time? At our local hospital!! It really upset both of us, but me, especially.
What if something like that were to hit Nashville, Tennessee? What if it hit one of the hospitals there? What if it hit the one where my mom worked? What would I have done then?? That's what keeps ricocheting through my head whenever I see the disturbing images being played out over and over again on the tv screen! Then I start to cry, and Tank has to hold me and try to calm me down.
If anything like that were to happen to my family back home in Tennessee (or those who live in Louisiana, Colorado, or elsewhere), I don't think I could ever forgive myself ....
I have always feared storms, and this year has been a bad one. Not so much in the way of tornadoes here, but we've had threat of them quite often, and then I see images of the tornadoes that slammed into Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Yazoo City, Mississippi (that happened last year), or Joplin, Missouri, and it only makes my StormFear all the worse. It's like I'm more than ready to move to Fairbanks, Alaska, where the only storms they have up there are magnetic (i.e., the northern lights)!!
We may be hunkering down at the local hospital today; there is a moderate risk just north and northwest of here. Too close. We're in a slight risk, but that's still not good when the moderate risk is as close as it is! Tornadic storms are expected. Just what I did NOT want to hear! :(
Just pray for us, please! We (Tank and myself) are both exhausted, and we are more than ready for the stormy period we've had the past month to loosen its deadly grip on the south!! Pray that nothing materializes, and if storms do fire, pray that there are no deaths or damage from tornadoes, large hail, or damaging winds!! I would greatly appreciate it, and so would the people across the southern United States! Thanks in advance!
~Love, your friend in Texas, Stephanie Sandusky. :(
