Hope Helen Hunt shows up and asks to use your shower?
Thanks to this thread, I know now that the siren two blocks south of me which occasionally goes off in the mornings is in fact part of Chicago’s Public Alert Warning System. Who knew?
They used to do this on the Gulf Coast – have hurricane parties in the basement. I don’t think they do it much anymore since Katrina. 
I’ve never heard a siren, and I work right smack downtown. The library windows are double pane laminated glass, though, so it’s possible there’s a riot outside right this minute with horses and possibly a brass band and if they don’t set off the motion sensor on the door I might not hear it. I’ve never heard any kind of a siren, ever.
Our sirens are tested the first Saturday of the month at !:00. Michigan.
I worked with a girl from Missouri and she never had a family residence that did not get some tornado damage.
Yell, “Auntie Em, Auntie Em!”
With our luck, we’ll get Skip Magic instead. 
What exactly is ‘tornado food’? Whipped cream? Mashed potatoes? Pineapple upsidedown cake?
This means something! This is important!
I’m hoping that you survived yesterday’s tornado warning.
The warning agency/medium should have told you what to do. If it didn’t, here’s the standard spiel we give on the air (I work at a radio station, so when other people are hiding from tornadoes, I’m driving to work to go on the air and telll people what to do.)
- Take cover. If a basement or crawl space is available, go there and stay there until the warning passes. Be sure you have communication of some kind, usually a radio tuned to the local station, so you’ll know whether the warning has been extended or, if not, when it expires. If a basement is not readily available, go to an interior room such as a bathroom, closet or interior hallway – some place that has no exterior walls. If a public tornado shelter is nearby, go there quickly. Do NOT take pets, valuables, etc. Take yourself and other people in your family.
That’s basically it. Hide. Quickly. Stay hidden until danger passes.
Sometime Friday, take a few minutes to go to the local fire station or police department and ask for a brochure on how to respond to a tornado warning. Then, first thing Saturday, figure out exactly what your response will be the next time a tornado warning is issued.
I’d like to nominate this for The Best Username/Post/Thread Trifecta, please!
Khadaji?
Thanks for checking. It was - as at least one poster has pointed out - a tornado warning, not a watch. But I made it through fine. AFAIK there is no siren in this area. The truth is, most of the time I’ll likely never know if there is a warning, a watch or whatnot, because I rarely watch TV or listen to the radio… But if I do, I’ll take the advice here and go to the basement.
Thanks all.
Exactly! Just Kidding!
If there’s a nearby warning, we (tornado alley residents) gather flashlights/lanterns, a radio, phones and a large comforter in the interior hallway. Also, don’t forget shoes. If the house blows down, you don’t want to be running around barefoot in the debris.
Oh yeah, the local sirens are tested every Wednesday at noon.
They really need to fix that, why make such an important communication confusing?
They need to have tornado a tornado watch when the conditions are right for one. If there actually were tornados spotted, then they need to issue a tornado sighting. Where’s my congressman’s address?
Where are these basement hurricane parties on the Gulf Coast? I grew up in New Orleans, lived there during Katrina and now live in Lafayette, La and never saw an actual basement until I lived in Washington DC for three years. That gives me 33 years of living on the Gulf Coast in Louisiana, having visited untold numbers of homes here and in Mississippi and I have never seen a basement down here.
Not saying they don’t exist or that hurricane parties have never taken place in them but I have never heard of this till you mentioned it. This is not a snark or whatever or saying it is false but I’d really like more info on this.
I don’t know if the sirens should be called “tornado sirens”; my town sounds them for severe thunderstorms also - not just strictly tornadoes. My town is very alarmist (sirens go off for storms a county away) and it is counter-productive IMO - they went off a week ago when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky - it was perfectly clear and sunny at my house. People get used to that (sirens with no storm) and tend to ignore them around here. I guess this is a rant for another thread.
My point is to be aware of the outdoors and listen to the weather channel. If I took every warning/watch/siren that my town issues to heart I’d never climb out of my basement in the summer.
Ours are only used for tornadoes these days. There are probably other times they would go off, like a nuclear attack, but in practice, only when needed. We pay attention to them. Although a lot of people here have the same reaction mentioned above, hit the porch and start looking for the tornado. My uncle is on the city police department. After the November 12 twister, the someone there put together a DVD of all the video they had, some from various police cruisers, some from civilians. They had almost an hour and they didn’t have access to all of it.
San Francisco’s Outdoor Warning System is tested every Tuesday at noon. I guess it’s mainly in case of tsunami or nuclear attack, as we don’t have tornadoes here too often, and earthquakes give no warning (and they have a way of letting you know they’re there).
I remember my old boss telling of his days in Texas: when the tornado warning came, he led his family to safe locations in the house, went outside and stood on his porch with a beer in his hand, scanning the skies for danger. Up and down the block, in front of every house, was a man with a beer in his hand, scanning the skies…
There aren’t many basements along the Gulf Coast. Surely not here in Houston. Too many floods–which can happen without hurricanes. But our flooding goes down pretty quickly.
The fear engendered by Katrina led to a huge evacuation from the Houston area before Hurricane Rita. Having seen what storm surge can do, I understand why dwellers along the coast need to run away. Likewise people in unsafe buildings. Rita swerved at the last minute & we got a night of heavy wind. (East Texas & Louisiana bore the brunt.)
But I live far enough inland that I’d probably have been fine even with a direct hit. So I didn’t evacuate. Hurricane vets who have a safe location to hunker down often do include a bottle of rum in their emergency supplies.