To use the words of my late grandfather, last night “a cloud” was about to come in. That’s Texan talk for a storm that will probably produce a tornado. The problem was I wanted this particular Greek salad with chicken from this particular restaurant. My brother knew it was too late to actually cook dinner and he likes that salad too, so my brother, my nephew and I went to the restaurant for Greek salad with chicken. On the way there, the weather band (standard on Mercedes-Benz radios of that vintage) said nothing milder about this oncoming “could,” then in Dallas’ sister city Ft. Worth than “damaging winds are reported, this is a life-threatening situation, take cover to protect your life.” The announcer also mentioned the quarter-sized hail, the 70-80 mph shear winds, the thunder and lightning, the fact that your roof was going to get hurt, apparently for sure. We put a time limit on our salad as our skies were only spotty-blue-grey “cloud” color. When we finished, the announcer said the time of impact of our part of city was in 10 minutes, so with the few cars on the side streets going at least 50 mph to get somewhere, we raced home. We had three minutes to spare to bring the Rover’s hood inside so it would not blow away (like I need that).
In three minutes the actual “cloud” started for our area, but our particular area was not hard-hit. We watched the news as our tv reception blinked, watching where the storm was, thankful we did not lose power like so many did, thankful it was not bad, and discussing what and how we’ll bring all the animals into the center bathroom if our civil defense siren started to sound. Sure the news centered on the storm, but it also centered on the night’s ACM benefit concert at the Arlington Stadium. The authorities evacuated, or at least partially evacuated, the stands (with some die-hards refusing to leave their precious seats). The news broadcast the tweets of the various country stars. My favorite was Martina McBride’s: “Tornado sirens going off. Stay in bus or go into stadium. Umm that’s a no brainer…#says the Kansas girl #in the stadium.”
This morning, I read that the concert start time was just delayed to 10:00 p.m., and apparently that it went forward. The news had some other tweets and showed the photo of the color of the radar depicting the storm that hit that area (that color shows the “terrible” the storm was). What I took away from this was the attitude of the country stars. Country stars have great attitudes. It’s so do what you need to, so normal. And it’s really good to see people come together when they need to. Hat’s off to them, the stars and the fans that waited out a “cloud” all together!
Sources, Dallas Morning News: http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2015/04/most-of-north-texas-including-dallas-fort-worth-placed-under-severe-thunderstorm-watch-until-early-sunday-morning.html/
Martina McBride on Twitter: https://twitter.com/martinamcbride