by Jessica
(Exeter, NH, United States)
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I grew up in Exeter, NH with my Mom and Dad, but later they got divorced for a few reasons. I always enjoyed watching the weather channel and making predictions for what the weather would be the next day. Even though I enjoyed doing that, I did not enjoy thunderstorms…and it hurt to even think of a tornado…the horror!!
One hot, dry, and humid summer day, about 1:00 or 2:00pm in the late afternoon, the sun was shining bright, right through the curtains, I was actually in Stratham at the time. My Step-father, Chuck, had just gone off to Sanford, Maine to get a haircut from his daughter at her hair salon where she was an employee. It was just my Mom and I. So, after about an hour, it was humid inside, we had the air conditioner on, downstairs and upstairs. We were watching one of my favorite movies, Confessions of a Shopoholic, it was at a great part. And, then the lights flickered a few times, and my stomach twisted, I knew something wasn’t right…
It was now at least close to five o’clock and my Mom flipped on the Weather Channel, station 47, briefly before resuming to the entertainment of the movie, and a roar of thunder cracked outside our windows. This was the beginning of a thunderstorm, just wonderful, huh??!! I was already shaking my buns off and I could barely walk without my hands and legs stumbling on the wood floor. My Mom looked outside and I took the pillow off of my head, and a white flash of electricity lit up the livingroom, for a split half-second. At this point, my stage of frightened was up at about 29 billion meters. I was going crazy. We then got a tornado warning, in which I pointed out to my Mom on the TV screen, and she took a glimpse and we were off to the basement.
Our basement was just like a large room, a carpet, two couches, a coffee table, and two computers followed by a printer, another furnace room, laundy room, and then the stairs up. I almost fell walking down the stairs and lied on the soft blanket that I had brought down to the basement and rested myself on it and continued shaking like a leaf, I recall. I could feel the floor shaking with the roars and vibrations of thunder that came from outside our condo. Constant flashes swept through the curtains and the windows, it was as if I was right outside on the streets in the middle of the storm.
After an hour or fifty-five minutes, the storm passed and it was extremely calm and quiet, and when I had the strength to,I stepped outside onto the screened-in porch
and glanced outside to see the sunset, and a connected all the way rainbow across the sky. It was all over, at the moment, but not forever. That was the story of not a tornado, but a supercell thunderstorm. A tornado could do damage twenty times worse than what the thunderstorm did, though. Cars just got a few bumps and scratches from the hail we received, but that is a night I will never forget.
Tornadoes might not come today or tommorow, but they will come someday.
