"hold my hand or you might blow away"...

...mom frequently told me as a little tyke. i gripped her hand tightly as i imagined myself flailing in the wind, like debris tossed around by a tornado.

i hadn't thought about this for awhile, but definitely did today as we had sustained winds of 43 mph and gusts of 51 mph. one county employee told me she was almost pushed to the concrete from a gust when walking around a building corner. (i imagined this causing a broken wrist or another injury and the victim trying to explain the injury, laughing to myself.)

the yard behind my place is littered with large branches, finally blown from the trees after being broken during our ice storm in december. in the next county they are having power outages because of the wind.

it's classic tornado weather, but so far we're only in a watch (and obviously a wind advisory). here's to a safe night in central nebraska!