Fear of storms

My daughter is terrified of storms. Especially night time ones. Always has been. She’s 5, so I totally get it. I was the same way. How do you deal with this issue with your kids?

We live in Illinois and have been getting quite a few nasty storms lately. We had one come through earlier today that had some pretty bad wind. We were all in her room watching it, since her room faces the direction that storms usually come towards us from. When the wind really started to pick up, it ripped a branch off of one of our trees and it hit the window. No damage or anything but it REALLY freaked her out. It’s quiet now, and she’s sleeping, but there’s a chance of storms again tonight...and pretty much every day for the next week. With how hot and humid it is, we’ll be expecting some more bad ones. White noise machines worked during storms when she was a baby, but now even the slightest rumble will wake her up. If the thunder is just rumbles, she stays in her room for a bit unless it gets really loud. If it’s a loud bang...she turns into the Flash and is in our room before you can even blink.

I’m just curious about whether or not you deal with this at all and how you handle it? We’ve tried the whole “thunder is just noise, it won’t hurt you” bit (same thing my parents told me). It’s a little harder to calm her down when it comes to lightning. Or when it’s so windy that the trees are basically blowing sideways. (Which I’ll admit is when you’ll start to lose me a bit, too)!