Seeking Shelter From the Storm

The new pond crested the dam that doubles as the entrance to the property. Where the water spills into the arroyo, it is at least eight feet deep.

That X sticking up above the water is the top of the fence. The creek bed is a quarter-mile away.

  Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm

  Come in, she said

  I’ll give ya shelter from the storm

—Bob Dylan

We found out why we have a storm room this afternoon—the one I have always joked is our “zombie apocalypse room.”

A severe storm blew up—heavy rains, gusting winds, tornados. It dumped almost three inches of rain in less than an hour. Given that the ground was already saturated and the ponds were already full to capacity, there wasn’t much hope to avoid a serious flood.

The house is on one of the highest points of the ranch. So I wasn’t worried about the flooding. The tornados were another matter. We all—Suna, me, Jaime’s family, Grillo, and Stella—all crowded into the storm room and locked the metal doors. Rose insisted on running upstairs to hide, but she and the house came through without a scratch.

The winds were strong enough to blow Jaime’s wet saw off the front porch. We also found a 4x8 sheet of metal siding buried six inches in the ground just on the other side of the gate. The siding was the wrong color to have come from any of our buildings or any of Ralph’s.

Ralph stood on his back porch taking pictures until he realized pieces of his hay barn were flying over the house. He was uninjured. In fact, the only injury sustained on either property was a small cut on one of the horses.

Our neighbors in Pettibone weren’t so lucky. The tornado touched down in that area several times. It destroyed a huge swath of trees and phone lines. It also took out at least two houses. And, yes, there were fatalities reported there. I don’t have the details.

As bad as the storm was, I’m glad we, our neighbors, and most of the country came out fairly well.

 

The creek hardly ever floods the bridge, but it did this time. Suna is fast enough to be on both ends of the picture.

Storms always make for the best sunsets—when they don’t occult the sunset.