There’ve been a few tornado-related threads here lately so I’m a little curious. Typically when I hear sirens go off, I collect the kids and we head for the basement until we get the all-clear. If the sky doesn’t look particularly threatening I might check the TV first to see if we’re in the affected area.
I remember once when I was in college, tornado sirens went off, and the group of people I was with just sat there and made no move to go towards safety, which I thought was…unusual.
So I’m curious about how other people react. This will be a poll.
Usually, I freak out and have a panic attack. Along with bears and going in reverse, tornadoes are one of my freak out triggers.
Long before the sirens go off, I am studying the radar and looking at the sky. If it looks bad, I make sure everyone has their shoes and is ready to run for the basement. If it looks really, really bad, I’ll go downstairs, clean out the closet we’re hiding in, put my purse in there and get some blankets ready.
Now that I have a smartphone, I’ll be able to get the radio and the radar even when my husband insists on turning off the computers. That should make for an easier time this Spring.
ETA: I also want to kill my husband, since he thinks it’s great fun to stand in front of a glass window and stare at the clouds. No basement for him - he gets excited.
Born and raised Oklahoman here. I used to be one of those “don’t take shelter until I actually hear the tornado” people, but it’s changed a bit since I’ve had kids. Now, if the sirens are going off I’ll clear out the laundry room and keep a very close eye on the news.
The one time I actually experienced a tornado (probably about a .5 on the F-scale), there was absolutely no warning. It wasn’t raining or storming or anything…the sky was a little cloudy and yellow, and it kind of *felt *like tornado weather, but that’s it. I think we were only under a watch at the time. I’m sitting in my room upstairs, and all of a sudden the entire house starts to vibrate. It did all those strange things you hear about tornados doing. Our skylights popped off the roof and filled the game room with leaves and debris, but we didn’t have any other damage. Neighbor’s greenhouse was completely destroyed, but it didn’t even take a single shingle off their roof. People across the street had a trampoline, and the tornado lifted it up and put down neatly on the other side of the fence…no damage.
I turn on the news, which tells me I’m going to die, so I just stay at my computer and wait for it.
Seriously, last evening it was apparent from the radar that Creve Coeur was not going to get a tornado, so I did stay at my computer. I do, once in a while, take my book and cigarettes into the kitchen so that I can duck into the bathroom at a moment’s notice, but that’s rare.
Living in a second-floor apartment built of wood, if a tornado decides to rip through the building, there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it. Ducking into the bathroom would only be to protect myself from the balcony window imploding.
I do hate living in tornado country. I love watching thunderstorms, and I can’t do that here.
Channels 4, 8, and 9 can give you the actual street address and detailed itinerary of the tornado if it’s in the OKC metro area. Stay with News Channel Nine, we’ll keep you advised.
I’ve been in three. Two F2s and an F0. Did volunteer work in Moore after the May 3, '99 F5. The F0 was the one I didn’t have any warning for because I was in my car with the CD player on very loud. That was about 25 yrs ago. Now, I always keep on a radio or TV if not my weather radio whenever it’s a dry line day. All three tornados totalled my cars. The two I was in shelter for did only minimal damage to my home, tho. Lost another vehicle in the human head sized hail we had last year. Roof, siding, and window damage, too. Only had about 5 minutes warning for that storm. No tornados in it. Just hail of biblical proportions.
Other, and live in the Chicago suburbs: I go out on the porch and listen for what suburb (ours versus one of the surrounding suburbs) has their siren going. If it doesn’t sound close, I don’t worry yet. We have the TV on typically, so a close tornado warning would come up as a weather alert on the TV anyway.
I live about 10 minutes from where the one of Tornado’s went through the St. Louis area last night. My wife took the baby to the basement, while I watched the storm. I only go to the basement if the sirens wake me up in the middle of the night, and haven’t been watching the radar.
The nice thing about living in tornado country is that the TV stations will go into “we’re all gonna die” mode two hours before the storm actually gets here. I watch the track of the storm. Most of the time it will either go north or south of me (just like it did last night.) However, I’ve been in three tornadoes in my life, so I have a healthy respect for them. If I have the slightest concern, me, the family, the dog and the bird go to the basement.
Seriously, by the time the sirens go off, most of us have been following the storm track for an hour.
It depends on the situation. Usually I wait and see, and the past few days I’ve been keeping the kids up a lot later than I’d like, waiting to see if I needed to take them downstairs. The last time I took the kids downstairs, it sounded like a freight train was going overhead, even though nothing happened to our house. What cracked me up was that my son and daughter slept through us carrying them down to the basement and laying them down to sleep on a concrete floor, but they’ll wake up if you walk past their rooms.
The sirens go off here (far west st louis county) so much I tend to ignore them.
During daylight hours I’ll take a look outside to see if anything looks ominous.
If they were to sound late at night I’d be a bit more prudent, I can think of few things more frightening than a tornado at night.
I grew up outside Chicago, with tornados frequent enough that the town’s tornado alarm was tested every Tuesday morning at 11:00. So, I heard it a lot. It only went off for real if the tornado watch <conditions right for a tornado> upgraded to a tornado warning <one has been sighted>. We always went to the basement, but even back then, long before home computing was a thought in anyone’s mind, we were aware of the possibilities and were prepared. In the basement, covered with sheets while mom looked out the glass windows. The sheets were in case the glass broke, which it probably would if one ever got close. None ever did, then.
As an adult in Indiana, I watched a yellow sky from work and it really really felt like one was gonna be near. And one was! But there were no alarms, and I ran outside hoping to see it. (I didn’t see it )
>.<
Yeah, I’ve worn out a few dozen guardian angels by now.
I’m just over the river from St. Louis, and when I was younger I rarely even noticed the sirens, nevermind doing anything about them. However, my husband is one of those people who loves to watch the Weather Channel, so whenever he hears the sirens it’s super bowl time. We usually go into the basement “staging area” (walkout basement, so the main part has 4 huge windows) while he watches weather on the TV and gets radar updates on his phone, and I read the Dope on my laptop. If it gets really bad, we move to the more protected (but less fun) basement area. I used to mock him, but there have been a couple of near misses, a guy killed during a tornado in a store near here, and now the Lambert damage, so I take him a bit more seriously.
No tornadoes where I am now, but we sure had them in West Texas. However, I can’t seem to recall any tornado sirens, not even with the one that struck our community. Could be mistaken about that, though. All I remember are the watches and warnings coming on the TV and radio, and if conditions looked that bad outside, everyone would pay attention to the media.
They will sound the sirens here for all of St. Louis County even if the sighting/warning is miles and miles away from your part of things. We check the TV and then decide whether or not to head for the bathroom. (No basement in our house, sadly. This is unusual for the area.)
Luckily, for this latest round the part of town we live in fell right in between the two major storm cells. We got heavy rain, and little else. However, I usually work in Maryland Heights, which was one of the areas that was in the path of the worst. Right now I’m in between jobs (starting new one Monday) or I would have been trying to head home from work during the nastiest part of the storm!
Pennsic 25 we had a tornado touchdown fairly close.
Something about being in a tent community of 15K people to give you an interesting sort of outlook to disasters.
We got extremely lucky that summer. There was still a fair amount of damage at Coopers, but nothing too horrible. Though I did blow my knee running down the kids in camp and getting them all corralled into one tent to keep them out of the way of the adults.