Like Thunder and Lightning

 

Potential power outage in a house with a black cat? Nah. Not spooky at all.

We just got an alert for a severe thunderstorm warning.

Meaning it's going to happen, of course.

Funny how life is. I can remember a stage, maybe around four years old, when I was completely terrified of thunderstorms. I mean, I hated them.

Now I find them fascinating and cool.

Granted, a thunderstorm in March is sort of random but not totally unusual.

But a summer thunderstorm? Oh yeah.

Normally, I'll step outside as the wind begins to build because that's a moment I absolutely love. The storm is imminent and the wind is just glorious.

Then it's like a scene out of Batman. OK, the 60s version with Adam West.

BANG! POP! KAPOW!

I suppose it's part of my very amateur interest in weather. Believe me, I don't know the first thing that any meteorologist is talking about and yet I watch a lot of The Weather Channel.

Still, in a big snowstorm or hurricane or some other event, you can normally find me watching the details of it all.

(Heavy rain has just started pouring as I type, for what it's worth.)

I think that -- combined with the zest of being on the scene for a big story -- is what led me to make sure I was in the studio the night of the "Superstorm" which just had to be named Sandy.

The jokes are too easy.

Knowing that I could anchor WGCH, even if that wasn't necessarily the plan, gave me an adrenaline rush to make sure I was in the studio that night.

Oh, I was so ready. I packed a sleeping bag and an air mattress and a pump.

I went in early to just be in the building and it wasn't long before a fill-in show host was needed. So began my roughly eight hours on the air, either sitting at the board or hosting.

I also appeared as a guest on a Vancouver radio station, and they asked me to come on again the next day. I had to make sure I kept just enough of a charge on my phone for that.

We lost power around 10:30 that night in Greenwich.

The batteries in the air pump were dead. There would be no air mattress because I didn't pump it up while we still had power.

A Greenwich cop stopped by and told us we were going nowhere. So Jim Campbell, Tony Savino, and I each picked a room to sleep in.

I slept in the sleeping bag on the floor of my office at the time and drove home late in the morning the next day. Mahopac eventually got power back before dark that night. We were only out about 24 hours, which was lucky compared to others.

Now, I listen to the rain, hoping to not lose power in an empty house with a black car.

You know, nothing too creepy about that.

No thunder yet. No lighting of the sky.

Not yet.