So tell me, have you ever tried to fit 10 people in a 10 x 10 room for half an hour? What if the room is more than half taken up by crates of canning jars? And the ceiling is only 5 feet 2 inches tall? And you’re underground? Oh, and it is waaaay past 8 of the 10’s bedtime?

You haven’t? Well, I can share some of this adventure as I welcome you to tornado warnings at the Jonas house.

In order to understand this exciting ritual, you must realize that my husband, Jim, was a teacher for 7 years. And not just any teacher, a science teacher. Do you know how many weather videos a Junior High Science Teacher watches? Tons. And if you are a loving wife who likes to spend time with your husband, then you get to watch weather videos too! Know what happens in lots of weather videos? Destruction. Mass devastation. And lots of it. Tornadoes, hurricanes, lightning, thunder – they all make much more interesting videos if you’re watching houses crumble, cars fly, and trees uproot.

After such indoctrination, let’s just say that the Jonases take severe weather seriously.

Last night there were severe storms moving through our area. And these storms (so the weatherman kept repeating) were ripe for “tornadic activity”. Enter the Jonas severe weather ritual, which goes something like this:

Mom: “Children, severe weather moving in, possible tornadoes. Take evasive action.”

Brett: “I’ll get the water bottles and the little ones.”

Colter: “I’ll prep the root cellar.”

Emery: “I’ll cleanup outside.”

Fletcher: “I’ll get the animals.”

Greyden: “What do I do, Mom?”

Mom: “Greyden, you get all the children’s blankets. Now everybody, GO! GO! This is not a drill!” (Yes, we’re one of those families that does fire drills, too)

While the children are scrambling, it is Mom’s duty (Dad’s if he is home) to monitor the radar and the weather alarm.

If we stay in a tornado watch, no problem. But the minute that tornado warning sounds, off we go to the root cellar. Maybe when the children are older, we’ll only go to the root cellar if we actually see or hear a tornado, but would you like to round up 8 children (ages 10 and under) and get them down to safety in the middle of the tornado? I wouldn’t. Like I said, we take evasive action.

This was a child-friendly storm system. It was very fast moving, so we only had to remain in the root cellar for half an hour. What did we do during that time? Sang songs by candle light, talked about tornadoes, ate some peanuts and peanut butter crackers that Cole had brought down. It was actually a fairly cozy half hour spent as a family. Not something I look forward to, mind you, but nothing terrible either.

Ten years from now, when the children are taller than the 5 foot 2 inch ceiling and there are who knows how many of us down there, well… tornadoes might not seem so scary then. 

By the way, we were fine. But a tornado from that system did touch down a few miles northeast of us and destroyed several houses. I also know at least one person was killed by the storm. Just another reason why I’m glad we built the root cellar.