My college stint in southern Iowa uncannily paralleled four years of the worst weather the city had ever seen. I was there for the campus tornado (2006), crippling ice storm (2007), near-record snowfalls (2008), and an epic flood (2008) that kept my shoes soaked for days. There was even a little earthquake last April.

Iowa sits on the upper edge of tornado alley. Of the 50 states, it has the highest number of F5 and EF5 tornadoes per square mile, so I quickly adopted the residents’ attitude toward the sky: we observed it. And sirens: we heeded them.

On spring evenings my roommate and I, on our respective computers, would click back and forth between homework and online weather updates. That radar box with its circling needle always seemed so much like a target to me, riddled with blobs we could not control. Our storm consciousness was visible in other ways, too: Maggie’s cardboard pet box was stationed near the door, atop a pile of footwear and outerwear that spanned at least three seasons. When necessary (usually weekly), we’d box up the cat and call the downstairs neighbors, whose apartment lent access to the basement.  Sometimes, if we were “late,” they’d call us first.

So pervasive was this culture of storm awareness that when my brother (and a real tornado) came to town on April 13, 2006, I couldn’t convince him that sirens really meant danger. (Yes, we do get tornadoes further north, but not nearly as many. Alerts are deemed trivial, or at the very least annoying).

Anyhow, we were on our way out of town for the weekend, but our route was smeared with red on the radar screen. I got a stern call from Maggie’s dad, a meteorology guru, telling us to stay put. So, my brother and I waited out most of the F2 tornado in a basementless Panchero’s Mexican restaurant. Floor-to-ceiling windows afforded us an omni-theater view of each round of hail. There, we were transformed from random-group-of-hungry individuals to Solemn Audience. Except my brother. In between bouts, he decided to get back on the road. Save for semis parked under bridges, we were alone – our Wisconsin plate putt-putting through a minefield. 

When I returned to Iowa City two days later, it seemed every other apartment building on the street had been selected for destruction by the giant rotating jackhammer of a tornado. For weeks afterward, the skyline was full of people, all gainfully employed: I never knew the city had so many roofers. And the aftermath wasn’t just physical. A quiet acquaintance of mine, whose closet had protected her from the tornado, suddenly became more social. When I asked her about it, she said next time a tornado came through, she figured she wanted someone with her in the closet.

One evening as I was riding my bike home from work, I found myself strangely unaccompanied by any sort of traffic – until the siren raised its whine. I pulled up to the local food co-op, yanked on the door, and found it locked. (The cashiers were hiding out underground and, rationally, didn’t want their vegetables stolen mid-tornado). I considered the doors of neighboring apartments, then ducked across the street to city hall. Imagining my panicked steps from an aerial view, I again had the keen sense that someone was playing darts.

On the lower level of city hall, I found a closely-packed herd of city council members (whose meeting had been interrupted), along with desperate shelter-seekers, like me. We were directed to a basement hallway of offices, which were narrow and perfectly suited for hiding out. I found myself crouching knee-to-knee with the city mayor, who folded his hands and smiled at me politely.

Iowa weather alerts were serious business, but they became part of daily life – a matter-of-fact drudgery. Simultaneously important and mundane, like paying the bills. You hear a siren, you don’t waste time rolling your eyes, or arguing that you have more important things to do. Just ask Mayor Wilburn. 

Last summer, I found myself at city hall again, but this time I was trying to save it. As the Iowa River and Ralston Creek became monsters undaunted by their own hysteria, we ran around with bags of sand and made walls. With only a three-foot wall built, we had to leave off sandbagging because of more imminent danger: another potential tornado. I ran all the way home and, having earlier given my keys to my roommate, proceeded to find a way inside with neither key nor door. I hoisted myself onto the roof through a window in an open stairwell, then forced open the window to my bedroom and found my way downstairs.

Ridiculous, in squishy shoes, I sat on a cinder block, panting in the damp space – safe for now. I noticed a trickle of water winding its way along the cellar floor.