My love of storms goes back to when I was a baby girl in Texas sitting in the kitchen doorway to watch the rain and lightning, feel the wind and wait for the thunder.  I'd sit in my little red rocker and cover myself with a blanket so I wouldn't get too wet.  Mama would let me sit there until her floor started getting wet.  Then I'd be going from window to window to make sure I saw it from every angle.  Clouds have always fascinated me, especially dark ones.  All my free-style drawings as a child had dark storm-cloud blue skies rather than the smiling suns all the other kids drew.  I have a rebel heart and a gypsy soul, and inclement weather goes along with that stormy nature.

Growing up and as a young adult, I would watch any show or read any book that had to do with a storm, or that had a storm involved.  Eventually, I found books on the histories of major storms and weather events, and documentaries on tornadoes and hurricanes, such as the 1974 Tornado Outbreak (Xenia, Ohio) and the legendary Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900.  Of course, now we can add the Hurricane Quad of 2004, the record-breaking hurricane season of 2005 (27 named storms, with 5 in the Greek alphabet), and the 1999 Oklahoma City Tornados.  I finally found my way to storm reports from NOAA and the NWS, and storm chaser logs on the Internet.

To better understand these documents and histories, and to understand the maps and methods of my favorite weather personalities, is my goal - and this program answers that desire.  And, when the skies turn dark and the wind turns sinister, I want to be able to foretell what's coming to call by more than intuition, premonition and aching joints.