Hurricanes:

Laurna Tallman

10 min read

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Jul 21, 2026

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A Prophetic Dream

In the dream, I was looking after Drew and Eric, not at our house, but at a lake-front apartment on Crowe Lake, which was also — in the odd way a dream can manage to do — the Florida Gulf Coast apartment of Gale’s family. Gale is Drew’s mom. As I looked across the water, a terrible hurricane came up from the “left” side of the apartment. I thought the picture windows might break. I backed away from them and noticed that rain was coming through the ceiling over the bedroom (which projected out beyond the normal shape for an apartment building and had a cedar slat surface like the roof on the indoor pool of the neighbor who gives riding lessons) and was wetting things (but mysteriously not really damaging them). I opened the apartment door and kept trying to get Drew to come out of the apartment with me. The floor was starting to tilt towards the water as if the storm had undermined the building’s footings — but young Drew was quite unconcerned and wanted to stay. There were other people near the elevator talking among themselves; I thought they probably were evaluating the danger and their own need to vacate the building. Finally, I got both boys downstairs. Our daughter Sarah was there, and Gale met us, quite calm about the storm, and took Drew back upstairs with her to their apparently livable apartment. And Sarah and Eric and I rejoined the family at home.

I

It was the sort of dream that was so vivid and feels so real that it stays with you. For one thing, Drew’s house is perched high on a hill overlooking Crowe Lake. And it was true on that Sunday morning in late September of 1995 that I was looking after Drew, our 11-year-old son Eric’s schoolmate, at our house for the weekend. I didn’t mention the dream to my husband Richard before he went golfing early. Later in the morning, Drew phoned his mom to tell her that I would take him home after 6 o’clock, which is when Richard had said he would be back with the van. However, he came home early, around 3 o’clock, and remarked that I didn’t need to wait until 6 to return Drew to his home.

I deliberately lingered. I was in no hurry because something from the dream was clinging to me, preventing me. The dream made no sense, but the feeling that I should not head out in the direction of the Lake was strong. I put him off with some excuse when he told me again that I could take Drew home. Not until around 5:30 did I feel comfortable about setting out with the boys. As we left, Sarah asked to come along to see Gale’s gorgeous Asiatic lilies.

At the top of the hill, almost in sight of Crowe Lake, we were stopped by a police officer who told us the road was closed due to a fatal accident. A line of cars ahead of us had stopped with their engines turned off, evidence of a long wait. He gave me permission to walk to the accident scene in order to find out if Drew could be gotten home. As I stepped out of the car, I noticed that the road sloped down exactly like the tilted apartment floor in my dream. I passed men from the volunteer First Response Team, some of whom I recognized from our church and local businesses. They were talking among themselves about the tragedy and about the officials who had not arrived. At the foot of the hill, half in my lane and half in the ditch, the damaged minivan rested on its roof. Beside it on the road, partially covered with a sheet, lay the dead woman, her unborn baby dead inside her. Her partner (the driver) and their two little boys had been taken away by ambulance. Onlookers had seen the driver take the right-angle turn away from the lake shore at very high speed. His van had slid into the shallow ditch bordering its lane, rolled three times while coming across the road, and ended on its roof. It had come out of my “left,” with the Lake behind it, just as the hurricane in my dream had swept across the Gulf of Mexico towards the left corner of the apartment.

A first-responder I knew let me use his car walkie-talkie to call Gale, who said she would meet Drew and me on the far side of the police tapes. I went back up the hill to the car and told the children what had happened. I asked Drew if he felt able to walk down past the accident scene to meet his mom and he said he did. So, I led him down (like in the dream elevator) past the accident. He was calm, very like his mother, although we were passing just a few feet away from the effects of the “hurricane.” When we reached Gale — a nurse who is accustomed to emergencies and who rides horses (the dream ceiling?) — she was calm, unlike some of the other onlookers. We exchanged our few bits of information about the wreck, then she and Drew walked away and up to their home on the hill overlooking Crowe Lake (like their return by elevator to the dream apartment). I went back to the car where Sarah and Eric were waiting (as in the dream). I U-turned on the road to drive back home.

I explained to Richard how God had given me the dream to warn me, and that He had protected the children and me by not letting me leave the house earlier to end up in the path of the “hurricane” minivan. To my dismay, he was neither convinced nor impressed!

Meanwhile, the seventeenth storm of an active hurricane season was swirling in the Atlantic and heading for the Gulf coast. It was the third category 4 storm of the 1995 season, which marked the beginning of unusually active hurricane activity.

II

The night of October 5 that Hurricane Opal poured through Ontario, my Love and I slept poorly. Rain still was falling in the morning. We had been ill for several years with chronic fatigue syndrome (now called “long COVID”) and awakened late, tense and irritable. As the rain blew through the window onto the fluttering, white curtains, we argued in our bedroom about taking the children to school. I felt they should stay in bed. I had a strong urge to stay in bed myself. But Dan had gotten up on his own, which was unusual, and so had Eric. I was upset, but dressed and went to check on Dan. Richard came downstairs saying he felt Eric should go to school. Dan came into the study to lounge in front of the TV. I misinterpreted my husband’s frustration to mean that he felt Dan also should be in school. Daniel protested. His father was distant. I insisted — against my first instincts and despite Dan’s protests — that he should come with Eric and me. I left in such a rushed and disgruntled state that I didn’t remove my hair curlers, things I never wear outside the house. I dropped Eric at the junior school, then drove to the neighboring town and dropped unhappy Daniel at the high school.

As I returned to Highway 7 in the mist and drizzle, the road felt slick and the visibility was poor. I was following a flatbed truck loaded with steel rebar. A mustard yellow pickup truck, probably bound for the road construction in our village, passed the vehicle behind me, then mine, then went on to pass the long semi. We were entering a curve as the pickup disappeared. I thought the driver was completely crazy. I slowed down. In an excess of caution, I pulled my van onto the shoulder of the road. Noticing a side road, I began to turn right into it, but a blue car, forced into his ditch by the yellow pickup, came flying out of the ditch — from my left — crossed both lanes, and hit the left rear side of my van, spinning it around to strike it again on the front side with its rear end. The car that hit me was totaled and so was our van. The driver, an older man, was dazed. I was shaken, with bruises and a sideways whiplash. Later, I realized that those embarrassing pink plastic curlers around my head had prevented a more severe concussion when I was thrown sideways against the van’s post.

A couple of days later, when the shock subsided, I realized that the Gulf hurricane of my dream had caught up with me, even though, again, God had tried to speak to me, especially through Daniel, to avoid an accident. This time, I had not been at peace with my husband and did not have enough confidence in my feeling — or in my son’s feeling — that we should stay home. I lamented in my prayer journal: “How can I get in closer touch with God? I feel so badly about failing to obey Him.” However, my injuries and the wrecked van made an impression on my husband. He admitted that the circumstances of my accident fit with my warning “hurricane” dream.

III

Two months later, on December 9, I was following Richard’s U-Haul truck down Highway 401 in blowing snow and icy road conditions. We were returning from a trip to Toronto to pick up some used furniture my sister Delaine wanted to give me that included two brown velvet loveseats I fancied. We had postponed Eric’s birthday celebration intended for the eighth, to move other things out of the way downstairs to make room for the loveseats. I was planning the cake I would make the minute I got home, when I noticed Richard’s turn-indicator flashing. He was pulling into a gas station, so I continued the journey home, expecting him to arrive soon after. As the hours went by and the layers of cake were long out of the oven, I became too worried to fuss over a fancy cake frosting. Eric agreed to postpone his birthday celebration again.

Late that evening, Richard pulled into our barnyard in the U-Haul with a thrilling story. He had obeyed the feeling that he should pull into a gas station, although he could have gone further with the amount of gas in the tank. As he neared the gas pumps, the truck’s brakes failed. The vehicle coasted until it nosed into trees at the far edge of the long lot. The brake repairs took hours. He told me the two hurricane episodes had heightened his own awareness of God’s whispers. His obedience likely had saved his life and the lives of others that night on the icy four-lane highway.

I saw the part I had played in this hazardous adventure. Many things had gone wrong with the U-Haul rental. That morning at the truck rental depot, the office printer broke down, creating a long delay so that Richard would have called off the “adventure in moving” except for my persistence. Other mishaps, like losing some of my sister’s cats from her apartment, had happened during the moving of the furniture. After we unloaded the loveseats from the truck late that night, the truck’s ramp stuck and had to be left until morning before it could be imperfectly retracted. By morning, the truck’s battery was dead. A mechanic had to be called from a distant town. The service station mechanic’s arrival was delayed repeatedly until late afternoon, when I was finishing the frosting on Eric’s cake. I met the mechanic at the driveway to explain the ramp and battery problems, warning him that he had parked rather close to the ditch along the road that ended at our driveway. At last, when he had replaced the truck’s battery, didn’t he back his car into the ditch! He had to call a tow truck. The entire trip had been fraught with mishaps — not to mention serious danger. Was it worth the trouble and the risks to collect a few pieces of used furniture? I gave serious thought to my lust for pretty things after this mess.

I also asked myself a more important question. Is it worth the trouble it takes to learn to hear the whispers of God? I was grateful that my husband had learned to listen, even if his learning was at the cost of my being in an accident. It takes something really serious to shake most of us out of our complacency.

The hurricane dream and the events that followed showed me that God constantly speaks to us. How often do we tune in? Jesus said we must live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Father. (Matthew 4: 4). I learned that God’s warnings may be many and may be layered. How many people devote enough time to learning how to hear God? How much more might He help us and protect us if we cultivated that relationship? Our obedience — like Noah’s — can save us and the lives of others. Or our disobedience — like that of Lot’s wife — can destroy us. I learned that a prophetic dream may have more than one application! My hurricane dream provided guidance and insight into at least three different driving-related situations under the symbol of a hurricane. I saw once again that dreams can hold an amazing amount of significant detail. The September dream carried at least three levels of important information.

What did I miss? I should have prayed about the dream and looked for more guidance, especially after the first accident. After three such incidents, I should have seen that a hurricane of a different kind was brewing in our sons that October school day, especially in Daniel. His unhappiness, based profoundly in dyslexic syndrome and aggravated by his use of marijuana, would further damage his ears, cause schizophrenia, and shatter relationships in the family. I had much more to learn about “listening for the Light.”