Yeah, sure, youbetcha!

My evening of fun...

What comes to mind when you think of summer in Minnesota?

Many people think:

• Mosquitoes
• Lots of humidity
• 10,000 lakes to keep us cool
• The state fair where everything is "on a stick"
• Paul Bunyan
• People who talk like those people in the movie Fargo ("yah" and "you betcha!")

Well, while we have all these things, we also have quite a bit of bad weather. And tonight was one of those nights.

It was a warm day today. Mid 90's and high humidity. I was thankful that we have A/C.

As I was working on the 3-Day Silent Auction blog I started to hear the warning "beeps" on TV. Sure enough, some tornado warnings were being issued for counties west of us. In fact, for those keeping score, a tornado touched down south of Willmar--which is where Andy's folks live. Thankfully, it did not hit them, but it did take out a turkey farm just north of them.

Soon, McLeod county was under a severe thunderstorm warning. And then, it started.

whooooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The tornado sirens were going off.

Oh. Did I forget to mention that they are IN MY BACKYARD?
And the cat hates them too (she was under the bed).

Putting on my meteorologist hat that I often wore at Camp Lincoln & Camp Lake Hubert as the office person I looked to the sky. I had a hand up to my forehead to see better. I then put my hand on my hips and turned around 360 degrees. I licked my index finger and held it up in the wind. And I came to this conclusion.

It was bad.

Here's the proof:

And I went promptly into the house.

Our little townhouse doesn't have a basement. Something I wasn't too thrilled about when we signed our lease as I have been in a tornado or two in my life. But we do have the room with no outside walls. That room would be our bathroom.

To be proactive, I grabbed the cat and put her in the bathroom. I thought, "If this thing really hits, I don't want to be digging her out from under the bed and reenacting a scene from the Wizard of Oz."

I shut the door and went out to watch the weather. Thankfully, there was no touchdown in our area or around us. But it did start to thunder, lightning and rain.

And rain it did.

In fact, the downspouts were gushing rain.

I had a laugh because that means the gopher has been washed out.

The rain subsided and the sirens stopped and the sky turned that strange yellowish-green color. I decided to finally let the cat out of the bathroom and this is what I found:

Yes. She was UNDER the ledge of the cabinet.