I’ve been reading the news reports about the Parkersburg tornado, and am surprised to learn that some of the people who died had taken shelter in their basements.
How did I get this old, living in an area with lots of tornadoes, and not know that tornadoes can get you anywhere? 
I suppose it depends on the tornado’s force, and Parkersburg got a big one, but still . . .
I’m slightly relieved. The Parkersburg tornado was an EF-5. Those are rare.
The experts say basements are still safe, but to be careful that you’re not under something heavy, like a refrigerator, or near a hot water heater. Or like in Twister, when they stopped for a second in a barn full of sharp tools. “Who are these people!”
all bets are off when an f-5 is going over your house. thankfully in the 2 school years i lived in ne, there was only 1 tornado that touched down within 50 miles. i would be living in my storm shelter if i lived in some parts of tornado alley.
i hear (and saw in a mag.) old missle silos make great houses… and there are bunches of them throughout the midwest.
oh goody, here comes a thunderstorm now…
I hope your thunderstorm is just a thunderstorm. 
At least one house here in town has a real storm cellar/bunker – a dugout with a door in the yard, like the one in The Wizard of Oz. It’s probably full of spiders, but I could hunker down with spiders.
A teensy tornado went over our neighborhood in 2005. It tossed the outdoor furniture and took some branches. Even that was scary.
I spent off and on over the last month at my parents’ place here in East Texas (Lake Fork) and, let me tell you, that was some of the worst wind storms we’d had in a long time (and I’m 40). Staying in a little travel trailer while trees whipped around you in the middle of the night, and with no warning system in miles, I was one scared pup to say the least. So much so, that I won’t be doing that any time soon again. Or at least certainly not in April or May.
< shudder >
I’m about 60 miles (as the crow flies) from Parkersberg.
According to the local news, of the five or six people who were killed there (the numbers are not nailed down, yet) only one had gotten to the basement and he died of heart failure while the neighbors were digging him out of the rubble. In any event it is a sad, sad thing.
The town, however, seems determined to rebuild its self. We saw the same thing at a little town in Southwest Wisconsin that was pretty much leveled by a big tornado maybe 20 years ago. Today the place is bigger and more attractive and prosperous than it ever was before its five minutes of horror. We can only hope the same thing happens at Parkersberg, New Hartford, Dunkerton and Hazelton.
As an aside, about an hour after the storm hit Parkersberg debris from there started falling around my town. We found a sheet of stick-on return addresses on the driveway along with a fair amount of broken yellow Styrofoam insulation boards. Other people found canceled checks and business papers. It is strange.
As always, there but for the Grace of God go we.
I’ve always wondered what happens to all the lighweight debris. After the Belmond tornado in 1966, somebody in Minnesota found a car registration belonging to a Belmond resident. In those days people kept their registrations in a little plastic pocket which was attached to the steering column with a little metal springy thing – remember those?
Wind does weird stuff.
As a younger man living in the Texas Panhandle portion of Tornado Alley, I loved to chase tornados across the plains, finding them more fascinating than dangerous. It really wan’t until the Jarrell tornado and seeing a documentary on its destruction, what it did to 27 people including an entire family, that I really realized to full horror of what they can unleash. Pretty awful force of nature there.
A weather radio would be a good thing for those situations. They cost about $30. You program them for your area, so you aren’t bothered with warnings that probably won’t affect you. My little town researched installing a siren and decided to get every household a weather radio instead. I hope we don’t regret it – they’re of no use to people who are outdoors when a storm is coming.
lieu, Jarrell’s on the short list of tornadoes that the local news people have been talking about. That one was indeed a monster.
yep, it was just a sound and light show storm. we don’t get many tornados in phila pa. although an f-0 and f-1 has occured in the last 10ish years.
the f-0 touched down on south street for a few blocks, and knocked over a phone booth with a person in it. the only injury. the tornado decided to go across the river to camden.
the f-1 touched down on roosevelt blvd. did a bit of property damaged, knocked down some trees. it stopped one block away from a newly built business. it scattered around some building supplies, no damage to the building they had just moved into.
i am constantly amazed of where and how far away they can fling things.