Well, This is Fun

It's 1 am. We're huddled in the basement with 3 angry cats in crates, 2 confused dogs and a wide awake, confused baby who's starting to cry. What fun.

At least McHenry's tornado sirens went off BEFORE the tornado this time. (Four years ago they went off several minutes after it had already hit my neighborhood.)

Various weather channels report it just barely to the west of us, heading east/northeast. We're still on the leading edge of the ginormous storm that spawned it. All we've seen so far, aside from the sirens, is a little lightning and some rain (apparently we have hail and 70+mph winds in store).

Just two days ago I printed out one of those "make an emergency kit" checklists and figured I'd make it my summer project, because in the last 2 weeks we've seen more tornadoes in this area than I've seen total in the last 13 years since I moved here.

Some of my friends thought I was being silly and paranoid. Right about now I'm wishing I'd been more paranoid and worked on it sooner, because running around in a barefoot just-woken-up panic clutching a baby in one hand and rummaging for a half-dead flashlight with another is not my idea of a good time.

***UPDATE***

It's 2:30. The tornado missed us and it remains to be seen what happened, but according to weather.com it passed by much too close for comfort. WH finally talked me into going back upstairs to bed, but I couldn't bear to put the baby back alone in his room and I can't fall asleep. Every little rumble of thunder and gust of wind sends my heart rate soaring.