Can we catch a glimpse of future?

Now I’m not saying I fell into some deep trance, looked into a crystal ball or was visited by dead relatives who warned me the tornado was coming, but I had an uneasy feeling going into April 11, the day the twister tore through my neighborhood.

And, odd as it may seem, I’ve discovered over this past week that others on my block had the same odd feeling before the National Weather Service even speculated the line of strong storms was bearing down on Warren County. What does this mean? Here you have me, a total cynic when it comes to the ability to see the future or anything that is even slightly off the beaten path, who has something I’m going to list as a slight premonition, and then other neighbors who also had an ill feeling about that day.

See what you think. The night before the twister, I’m sitting on my front porch with the warm wind hitting me in the face. Then, from out of the blue I begin wondering what would happen if a tornado were ever to hit my neighborhood. I mean the odds of it striking right in my back yard in a county of 431 square miles is astronomical.

The following day I was followed by an uneasy feeling, a feeling that became even more uneasy when radar revealed the string of strong storms had hit Lawrence County to our southwest. That’s when I first called my wife and suggested maybe she might want to bring the kids and come up here seeing this place is like a bunker, since we are technically underground here in the newsroom. My first call was met by something less than enthusiasm by my wife who was going to pick up my eldest child early from school.

However, as time ticked by and the storm was getting closer (this is before we even knew where in Warren County it was going) I had the overwhelming urge to call her again, which I did, this time being more assertive that they should come up to the paper and ride it out. Keep in mind, I’m a storm chaser. I basically bolt to where ever the storm is going so I generally don’t get alarmed about storms. Actually, there’s something fascinating about storms to me, so this wasn’t an alarmist reaction.

Anyway, long story short, my family ends up coming up to the paper, thus not being home when the storm tore through our neighborhood. However, there’s another part to the story. During this time, while worrying about my family, I was also wanting to get home and unplug some stuff since there was quite a bit of lightning.

However, there was delay after delay, pushing lunch back nearly an hour behind when we usually eat. So, when we were emerging from Three Star Mall, my first inclination was to hurry home and unplug stuff. But, much to my chagrin, there was the mother of all traffic tie-ups as I was pulling out from the mall. It was almost like ‘Smoky and the Bandit’ when the funeral procession is holding up the sheriff. It was comically long, taking me over 10 minutes to pull out. And, in the meantime, appearing on the horizon was the blackest cloud I’ve ever seen, lighting striking the ground from it, looking like the end of the world.

The cloud was settled over my neighborhood, a neighborhood I would have been in had I not been stopped by a freakish traffic pattern which delayed me just enough that I wasn’t there. Now, my question is, did this delay keep me from winning a press award from getting an awesome twister shot, which I would have tried to do, or did it save my life from being killed by a piece of debris as I stupidly stood out in a storm?

I don’t know if we’re connected to nature as one, whether the Man upstairs was giving me a heads up or if things just happen, but I do know the events of April 11 are something I don’t understand and probably never will.

Duane Sherrill is a reporter for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191.