May 2, 2021. Madison, Mississippi. Tornados.

In Mississippi, people take storms seriously. They especially take a tornado warning seriously as I discovered tonight. I was eating dinner watching TV when an alert came on the screen, alerting me of a tonado watch. I pushed the button on my remote to remove the alarm without checking to see if it pertained to Madison County, which is where I live. That was not smart. Almost immediately, I received a text from Donna, who lives across the street, telling me that we are under a tornado watch, so we are supposed to seek shelter in a safe place. As I was sitting in the TV room surrounded by big windows I was definately not in my safe place. Every house is supposed to have a safe place to go to in a bad storm. Christina and I discussed recently what to do in my house and she told me to go downstairs in the closet. And to stay away from the windows. What I did was switch the channel to a local station, where they were taking over regular programming and were showing the path of the storm. I could hear no wind or rain so I know no storm was directly overhead. I did not retreat to the lower level but I did watch the progress of the storm on the TV right until the weather service removed Madison County from the danger zone. In addition to the alert on the TV and my neighbor texting, the sirens started wailing which means seek shelter. They are loud and even if you do not recognize the instructions, you would certainly know that something was amiss. In Galverton when a storm heads into the Gulf, everyone tracks the storm all the time. The same is true in Mississippi. Everyone in Mississippi tracks the path of a storm until the all clear sign is posted and the siren stops wailing. Storms are treated very seriously in Mississippi. This time we got lucky. The storm veered north and east of us. Whew.