this close to landing in Oz

This afternoon it looked like rain, so I brought my towel down off the line. Dan and I were in the kitchen, and the sky darkened a little.

"Maybe we should take the tent down," he said, looking out the window at the large farmers' market style tent we keep up in the summer time, "It looks like it could get gusty."

I pondered for maybe two seconds and then the deluge began full force. The storm had its foot on the accelerator, and Dan and I ran out into the yard to greet it. The tent was already starting to dance around with the threat of doing a pirouette into a neighboring yard or street. Dan and I struggled to collapse the tent as the rain soaked us and the wind kept trying to blow the tent out of our hands. I wondered if this was a tornado. I'm from California; I don't know much about tornadoes.

Max leaned his head out the door. "Get inside! You need to get inside!" he yelled. I panicked, thinking that when the guy from Ohio tells you to get inside, it must be a tornado. We were so close though, so we finished collapsing the tent. Dark as it was, I could just see across the yard that the wind was throwing patio furniture everywhere, including into the tomato plants. We stashed the tent in the stairs down to the basement door and ran to the back house with Max. I lifted a patio chair off the tomatoes on the way in.

Although the winds died down, the rain was still coming in sheets. The downspout was on the ground and water was pouring down the side of the house like a river. Already drenched, we reattached the downspout with a dog leash and jammed some boards under it to keep it from falling off. The rain barrel was overflowing at this point, and Dan had to transform a garden hose into a siphon to get the water down into the working drain.

The storm subsided and we were soaked down to the skin. Later the cat returned, her fur spiky from being sopping wet, her feet black with mud. It wasn't a tornado, by the way.