So in July, I was shocked to get a tornado alert on my iPhone during a severe thunderstorm.

I grew up in North Texas where tornadoes are a rite of spring. In elementary school, tornado drills were as common as fire drills, but a little bit different. For tornado drills, we filed into the halls outside our classrooms. The walls were lined with blue metal lockers, and we were instructed to sit with our backs against them with our legs bent.

“Quickly, children! Stop talking! Heads down. Cross your arms over your heads!” the teachers yelled with feigned urgency, sipping casually from cans of Tab and Dr. Pepper. And we complied, pressing our noses into the space between our knees, scratching mosquito bites, whispering with our classmates to the left and right until the “all clear” bell rang.

The tornado drills were put to use a few times over the years when the threat of a real twister descended on our suburbs. Thankfully, none of them transpired near enough to affect me or my family.

I was an adult before I experienced a true tornado.

My four children were all under 6 at the time, and we lived on a hill above a large wheat field. The kids were watching TV when an emergency news alert interrupted their cartoons. A twister had been spotted a few miles south of us and was headed in our direction. I looked out the living room windows and saw dark, heavy clouds churning toward us from beyond the wheat field. Trees were whipping from side to side like rag dolls, and the sky had turned an ominous green.

Fear rose in my throat, and I leapt into action. Grabbing a box of cereal and a jug of water from the kitchen, I herded the children into the hall bathroom and squeezed us all into the bathtub. The wind began to blow harder, whistling loudly and tossing debris against the house. Then suddenly, the wind stopped and all grew still. The whistling was replaced by an eerie silence.

Remembering the tornado drills of my childhood, I urged the kids to put their heads down on their knees. They mostly did as I asked, calmly chomping on handfuls of cereal and chattering with excitement. I was a pretty chill mom even in a crisis, so the children didn’t realize we were in danger. It was just a fun game to them–sitting in the bathtub eating cereal.

I wrapped my arms around them and lay my body across theirs as a different noise returned– like a loud, speeding train. The house shuddered and shook, and the metal roof shrieked. I heard siding being ripped from the outside walls.

A few minutes later, it was over. The sun came out as the few remaining clouds continued to spit rain, and we left the bathtub feeling safe and secure. When I stepped out on the front deck, I saw how lucky we had been.

The tornado had touched down about a half mile south of us and passed just 50 feet from our double-wide mobile home on the hill. It cut a wide swath through the countryside, starting at the far end of our wheat field and continuing north for five miles. Trees were flattened and ripped up by their roots, houses lost their roofs and outbuildings were destroyed. Pieces of our roof were missing, and planks of siding had been torn from the wall nearest the tornado’s path. A little pink baby buggy and a toy dump truck were hanging in trees behind the kids’ playhouse.

I still remember the fear I felt that day. It stayed with me across the years, through many tornado warnings. And I felt it again in July when I got the emergency alert on my phone about a possible tornado in Asheville. That day, I quickly turned on the local news to watch the weather report. The meteorologist said a rotation had been spotted north of Asheville and was moving in our direction.

I began to panic.

Chuck was bowling that night, so I was home alone–just me and Poppy, and she’s not much help in times of crisis. Taking a deep breath, I glanced around me, looking for a place to take shelter. But there are no enclosed spaces in the center of our little house. All the closets and our one bathroom are either on or near exterior walls.

My fear escalated, and I ran around the house muttering nervously, “What now? Where do we go?!” Poppy, accustomed to her mom who is not as chill as she used to be, quietly retreated to the sunroom.

10 minutes later …

I’m embarrassed to admit that it took that long for me to remember that our house has a basement. A large, finished basement. In my defense, I have never before lived in a house with a basement or even a storm shelter, so this is a novelty.

I grabbed some snacks and bottled water, my laptop and phone, put a leash on Poppy, and headed to the basement door. Poppy had not been in the basement before, so she paused at the doorway, pulling back on the leash and staring at me as if to say, “Huh uh.” It took a minute of coaxing for her resistance to fall, and she quickly followed me down the stairs.

I settled into an old recliner left by a previous tenant, and Poppy curled up next to me on the cool basement floor. I texted my good friend and co-worker who lives in north Asheville. “You OK?” I asked. “Yes, we’re fine,” she responded, adding that she and her cat Newt were sheltering in a bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, the danger had passed. Poppy and I headed back upstairs, and I let her into the backyard. It was covered in debris: fallen limbs, clumps of leaves, some plastic flowerpots and a patio pillow. High winds had blown our hammock round and round on its metal chains, and it was hanging sideways in its stand.

Thankfully, the rotations spotted in that severe thunderstorm did not develop into full tornadoes …this time.

I later learned that, just as I had assumed pre-move, twisters are not common in Buncombe County. News reports said that before the July storm, the city of Asheville had not been under a formal tornado warning in 17 years. A small tornado (an EF0) damaged homes and uprooted trees in Black Mountain in 2024, but it was the first twister to touch down in Buncombe County since 1999.

Still, now I know the threat is real. The odds may be with us here in Asheville, but weather is still quite unpredictable. Case in point: Hurricane Helene.

The next time we get a tornado alert, I won’t be caught off guard. I’ll be prepared. I’ll pull from my experience with elementary school drills, a twister that came too close for comfort, and 50 years of living in tornado country. And I’ll try not to panic.

After all, I was blessed with my own personal tornado drill here in AVL in July.

Plus …I have a basement.