She who lives in a glass house…

I live in a glass house.

I’m lucky to live in a glass house. I also live on a lake. The views are fantastic. I am blessed to live in a glass house on a lake.

Living in a glass house on a small peninsula in the middle of a private lake is… pretty damn nice. It’s a National Geographic show on weekends; and every sunrise and sunset.

From this glass house on the lake, I am able to admire the elegant herons fishing on the shoreline. And I’ve learned they have a creepy, not so elegant, eerie call that can startle you awake in the wee hours of the morn.

I can enjoy watching the families of geese paddle by in a protective line as I take count of how many goslings have made it another day.

And I can watch my own children grow up in a magical environment where they can play and roam to their heart’s content. Even I can jump in the lake on a hot summer day or just sit outside and enjoy the view after a frustrating day at work. It’s a good life.

Mostly.

I live in a glass house on a lake in Oklahoma.

Late spring in Oklahoma is a meteorologist’s dream. You want to study weather? Come to Oklahoma. Tuning in to the local stations is, as one colleague put it, like listening to the “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast.

Late spring and fall in Oklahoma means wind shear, hail, torrential rains, flooding and…tornadoes.

For the 2010 spring season, all of the above has been sighted, but with the extra damage from not just hail, but baseball- and softball-sized hail. If you’re lucky enough to not have a tornado pass over or near you, you might just get pelted, nay pummeled, with hail.

This is my second spring living in a glass house on a lake in Oklahoma.

If we built a tornado shelter on this peninsula in the middle of the lake it would be a lake-fed pond with a steel door. We have one room in this house with no windows. The central bathroom…which has a glass shower door.

I will confess that the nearest shelter is only up a long driveway. It would be my mother-in-law’s reinforced “closet.” I won’t get into why I’d rather not rush up the drive and stuff myself in her closet. Yesterday, I came close.

View to the West:

Watching rotations in the sky from every side of my house was an adrenaline rush tempered with an underlying sense of terror. My relief when darkness fell was staggering. In this instance, not being able to see what was going on outside was a weight off my shoulders. I could then focus on listening to news reports of when to take cover, instead of watching the skies outside in fearful anticipation.

View to the East:

We made it through another night with no damage. We were lucky. Many were not last night. Many were not this last weekend.

I have to say I’m usually not a fan of Okahoma’s 100F summers…but I’m a fan now.

I would like to skip spring now and move on to summer. Then I can once again be grateful that I am blessed to live in a glass house in the middle of a lake in Oklahoma.