MichaelandChrissy.com

I don’t like getting wet, let alone being rained on. Normally, I won’t even leave the house if it looks like it’s going to rain outside. But the weather has been very strange lately. I seem to have gained the uncanny ability to induce precipitation on a beautiful day simply by getting into my car. Furthermore, the brutality of the rain is inversely proportional to the length of my drive. I can control the weather! Don’t believe me? I’ll explain.

On Saturday, Aiden and I drove to Meijers to get some groceries. It’s not very far to go, and it was only a little cloudy when we got there. As we were about to check out, rain started to come down in sheets, and driving wind was pushing the torrent horizontally. I didn’t want to go out in that. Then someone got on the intercom and announced a Tornado Warning. A tornado had been spotted only a mile away! About a hundred customers were herded into the “Tornado Safety Area”, which was basically the stock room. It was a huge concrete bunker with steel roofing joists, so we were pretty safe there. They let us out about fifteen minutes later, and the rain had completely stopped by then.

I thought this was just a fluke, but we got a near repeat on Sunday. I had just put together a sandbox for Aiden, so Chrissy sent me to Lowes for play sand. Again, it was cloudy when I got there, but no rain yet. When I tried to check out, the downpour started. It was coming down so fast that water was pouring over the sides of building. After waiting inside for fifteen minutes for the deluge to stop, I decided to make a run for the car. I was soaked to the bone before I even got my keys out. And once again, the rain had stopped when I got home. The drive to Lowes was a little longer than the drive to Meijer, so logically there was no tornado this time.

Yesterday, I produced a moderate amount of rain on my way home from work. It had been a nice day, and I had even gone for a walk across campus that morning. The first drops of rain fell as soon as I got into the car to go home. People tend to forget how to drive when the road gets a little wet, so traffic snarled up a bit. That made my commute a little longer, about a hour, so the rain wasn’t that bad (remember, the shorter the trip, the worse it gets). So it would seem that my suspicions are justified. I would hate to see what would happen if I drove across the street. The heavens might open up and unleash an F5-level twister on us!