Considering on the Wizard of Oz, the music with the wicked neighbor and dog in the basket…isnt the sound of a tornado! She was wicked! (Was there a dog in the basket? I havent seen it in ages)
We have a biolite setup in the barn for when the power gets knocked out due to trees down in storms, with a chip of MP3s for amusement, and a place for charging phones, or other USB chargable stuff, and it has 3 battery power lights that come with the set and a small solar panel. We also have 6 battery LED lanterns from Lehmans, and 2 full sets of USB chargable batteries.
Growing up, a friend lived in a house built in the 1950s that had what looked like an oil change pit in the garage that was actually the access to a bomb shelter that they used as a vermin proof storage area. It was neat, I went into it a few times getting stuff with his mom. I do remember it had a small toilet room with shower/wet bathroom, which ever you call it. I would imagine they had a buried water tank and septic system tie in of some sort, and no idea offhand what they used for electricity.
I have been through several hurricanes, and one Pennsic there was a tiny tornado touchdown about half a mile away that the resulting winds trashed a lot of campsites. That one was more scary because my godchildren were in camp with us.
Yes, I once called her Elmira Mulch by mistake to DH and he said she’d be flying by on a lawn tractor!
A tornado warning means she secures the horses in their stalls, I dose the dogs with trazadone, then I mix a batch of Hurricanes.
An actual tornado is a rare event around here.
A tornado warning means that a tornado has actually been spotted - at least on radar. Depending on how close, the time spent securing the horses might be regrettable.
A tornado watch, on the other hand (or a storm warning) is a different matter.
Here: we are fortunate enough to live in an area where tornados are quite rare, though not unknown; one touched down about 25 miles west of here a couple years ago, for example. The one or two times where we’ve gotten an actual warning, we’ve just gone down into the basement while making sure we had our cell phones with us (and plugged in or fully charged, in case we got buried and needed to call for help).
Somewhat amusing, if baffling: About 6 years back, we were travelling north from southern Florida. We stopped at Kennedy Space Center to do the tour. The rain was pretty nasty, so they didn’t let us off to go to observation towers etc. About halfway through the bus tour, everyone’s phone started blaring an alert: yep, tornado warning. Not watch, warning.
And the bus kept on going. 
We finally made it back to the building with the Saturn 5, and wandered around inside. After 15 minutes or more, someone high up finally twigged that hey, maybe we ought to do something to keep everyone from getting killed, and we were all ordered to go into the interior theatre they had onsite. 15 minutes later we were given the all clear.
Go to the lowest part of the building where I am and stay away from any windows
So we almost never get tornadoes here. A few weeks ago we had a wind shear take down 2 pine trees in the backyard and dropped a huge part of an oak tree onto the house. For that one I did hear the freight train coming. We evacuated to the basement. It was so loud we didn’t hear the trees break.
A few days ago there was a NWS tornado warning. We evacuated to the basement and thankfully got nothing this time. But one town over a small tornado struck.
Depends on the sky, IMO.
While I’ve luckily never been in the direct path of a tornado, I’ve been within spitting distance a half dozen times. Last week we had one a block over - a little one (EF0).
The sirens go off, but the sky is still blue or grey? Trees are swaying the same way? I stay upstairs and watch.
The sirens go off, but the sky is weirdly yellowy green? Some trees are still while others are swaying in all ways? Then it’s time to head to the basement.
I would say since I moved into my house in 2006, we’ve gone downstairs maybe twice for tornadoes, three times for severe storms.
On a shelf downstairs I keep a weather bag - cranking lantern, couple of flashlights, battery radio, portable charger.
Granted, Minnesota is not tornado alley, but we do average 27 per year. The family cabin was hit hard many years ago when two tornadoes decided to join up on the lake out front. My daughter’s first experience with having to hit the basement was watching one hit on the opposite shore of the lake.
I live in an area that’s prone to tornadoes (Middle Tennessee) in a 180 yr old house with no basement. Maybe 3 times in the 17 years I’ve lived here have I taken shelter. I get the dogs (5 right now), my phone, my Kindle, and my wallet and go into a closet built next to a fireplace. I know bathrooms are usually the safe place of choice if there’s no basement, but the only bathroom in my house is on the western side, and the weather usually moves west to east. The closet is on the east side of the fireplace/chimney, so hopefully a bit sheltered.
I’ve been close to a couple tornadoes. Close enough to turn the car around and run in the other direction. In one, my step-father was in his attic working and didn’t know there was severe weather, while a house on the end of his block was damaged.
StG
I run for the basement, along with my pets.
My mom used to have a drawer that had most of the important family paperwork, bank statements, mortgage book, etc. I figure in these days of computer storage I’m not going to was time gathering stuff like that.
The only time mom ever was compelled to gather that drawer was in 1966. I was 11 years old and a tornado went right through our city of Topeka. Some poeple probably had their lives saved by listerning to Bill Kurtis, who later became a famous TV personality. It was judged to be what would be called an E5 tornado.
Here’s the same link without all the personal tracking crap attached to it.
Gee, sorry for the “crap”
I hope that didn’t sound like an attack on you. I just despise Google’s desire to make a buck off every click.
A bit late to the tornado party, but: We are in the mid-Atlantic and tornadoes are pretty unusual around here. Not unheard-of; a year or so back one hit Reston (another DC-area suburb), and about 12 years back one went up along I-395 (main highway from the south into DC) and then apparently hopped over to Maryland, where it caused some fatalities.
In this house, I think we’ve had one actual warning. That time, I grabbed the kids and my phone (and a charger) and we hunkered down in the basement until it had passed. That’s pretty much what I’d do now - well, without the kids, who are in other towns these days. If it’s that urgent, there’s no time to try to gather paperwork or other “bug-out” essentials that I might try for if we were evacuating.
If I’m on a tour bus at Cape Canaveral, I stay on the bus while the driver ignores everyone’s phones blaring ALERT ALERT ALERT… sigh. He kept on driving us, and what else were we gonna do… eventually we were taken back to the building where they have the full Saturn 5 rocket. And a while after THAT, they made everyone there go into a small theatre as being the best protected spot in the building.
I’m told the sky gets this really weird color when it’s tornado weather. Certainly the time the tornado went up 395, the sky was pretty strange-looking. I actually took 395 southbound to commute home and it looked greenish gray; evidently it had just gone by a few minutes earlier (I don’t think it touched down on 395, or I’d have seen a lot of wiped-out cars).
I’ve always heard the same thing, and when there were tornadoes in the area, I have seen that green sky. However, when I have actually seen tornadoes either peeking out of the clouds or actually running along the ground, the sky was normal thunderstorm blue/gray/black colors.
When we get a tornado warning here, since we don’t have a basement or a root cellar, we just get the pets into some carriers (all cats these days) and hop in the steel shelled bathtub. None of our closets have room for us to get in them (and you’d likely get nailed by all the nonsense we store in there), so the pipes of the bathroom and the steel tub is the best hope we’ve got. I haven’t been home for an actual warning that lasted more than 10 minutes in the last decade, though.
I did have one warning that ended in that classic freight train sound and took the roofs off of buildings in the area at one of my jobs. Again, nothing below ground, so I cowered in the narrowest corner of the women’s bathroom for about 10 minutes.
And once when I was young, a tornado was in the area and the CD sirens were going off. My mom came in, woke me up, and told me to go to the bathroom because there was a tornado warning. When she had collected my brother, she got into the bathroom to find my older sister under a mattress in the tub, and I was nowhere to be found. When my mother asked where I was, my sister replied that I had came in, taken a leak and walked back to bed. So, there was a miscommunication in the instructions, it seemed. By the time they had straightened that out, the sirens had stopped. So I didn’t really even realize the sirens had gone off until breakfast the next morning.
It was 1977, I think. We lived in Wisconsin, in an apartment building, no basement. We had a friend over to watch a movie on HBO. The living room drapes were drawn.
About halfway through the movie, an interruption: tornado warning, our place was in the target area.
Mr VOW opens the living room drapes, and the sky is PEA GREEN. My blood ran ice cold, and I figured we were going to DIE.
Obviously, we didn’t.
1986, we lived in Kentucky, a nice, two-story house with a basement. It was evening, and Mr VOW heard the siren go off just as the TV was interrupted with a warning.
“Do you want to go to the basement?” sez I.
“I guess we better,” Mr VOW replied.
I collected pillows, blankets, sippies, bottles, snacks, and medications. Then I went to retrieve a sleeping 18-month-old from his crib, and headed downstairs.
Mr VOW had to retrieve the sleepy, pissed-off three-year-old Daughter, who just so happened to have a toes-to-crotch cast on her right leg.
“We’re going to have a picnic in the basement,” I told her, to lighten the situation.
“I don’t WANT to have a picnic in the basement; I want to go to bed!” She wasn’t buying it.
We’re all sitting on the floor, and I ask Mr VOW where the little teeny-tiny TV is that we just bought.
“Oh, I left that at work.”
I asked if he had a radio.
He ran upstairs and brought back The Daughter’s little Care Bear clock radio. He discovered the clock had batteries, but not the radio part. Back upstairs, and we could hear thumping and crashing as he looked for batteries.
He came back down with batteries. The radio worked.
I said, “Maybe we should have a flashlight, the power will probably go out.”
Mr VOW runs back upstairs and returns with a PENLIGHT.
The All-Clear sounded, because the tornado looked at the nonsense going on in the VOW household and died laughing.
Give me an earthquake any day!
~VOW
I’ve seen that sky. 24 September 2001:
I woke up at about midnight one night in Wausau to the tornado siren going off. When the lightning struck you could see the sky was pea green and the wind was ferocious. I grabbed the cat, stuffed him in his carrier and ran into the basement. The downstairs tenants saw me running down the stairs and followed. Nothing happened but it sure felt like it was going to.
In the hallway bathroom (no outside walls), I have a bicycle helmet, rain poncho, and a pillow (to sit on in the tub) on top of the cabinet above the toilet.
If the approaching weather is severe (tornadoes forming to the west), the laptop, mouse and power cord, current income tax file folder, work notebook go under the sink in said bathroom. Weekly pill box and bucket of pill bottles, snack bars, bottle of water go in a bag placed in the tub beside my purse. Weather radio (hand crank with light source) is on in the bathroom and TV is on for updates.
When the local sirens sound, I am sitting in the bathtub wearing my helmet and rain poncho with the bag and my purse on my arm. If the potential bad weather is forecast to hit during the night, I will do the above preparations and also put clothes and shoes in the bathtub before I go to bed.
The tornado in Dallas, last fall, came within 3 miles of my house.
That’s almost certainly the same event I mentioned upthread. Neighbor!!!