Tornado Safety purrs

"jmcquown" wrote

When I was about 15 a girlfriend was spending the night. As teens will
do,
we stayed up most of the night talking. I was sleeping on the floor; my
friend was in my bed. Sometime around 5AM my mom came into the room
saying,
"Jill! You guys, get up, there's a tornado coming! You have to come with
us into the bathroom!" (It was an interior bathroom, dead center in the
house) Mom must have been very frustrated, not to mention scared, because
she couldn't rouse us. Finally she said, "Well at least get Libby down on
the floor with you!" I remember mumbling, "Libby, get down on the floor"
and as an afterthought, "bring your pillow."

When we got up later that morning we found the tornado had cut a swath
down
a hillside less than 2 blocks from our house. Luckily it missed any homes
and only touched down briefly, but she and I didn't hear a thing.

At 15, a close encounter like that might have been exhilarating. At 35 or
so, I probably would have taken it in stride. If it happened now, I think
the fright would kill me, even if I was safe in the basement!

jmcquown wrote:
Jeanne Hedge wrote:
On 30 Mar 2006 22:27:58 -0800, wrote:


Pat wrote:
My greatest fear is tornados that strike in the night when I'm
asleep, but I am too tired to stay awake any longer tonight and
don't want to sleep in the dank basement which I have so far not
had time to clean. Would appreciate some purrs to keep me & the
owners safe tonight.

Pat, youve just still got mobile home mentality about storms. If you
have a basement, you're really quite safe. Sometime you might get a
NOAA weather radio; the ones that wake you up when there are
warnings
in your area.

Definitely! Pay attention to the weather alerts, but don't let them
rule your life (within reason) On April 3, while I was taking cover
at my friend's house, my parents didn't have a clue that anything
unusual was going on! (they were on the other side of town, but the
town just isn't that big!)

When I was about 15 a girlfriend was spending the night. As teens
will do, we stayed up most of the night talking. I was sleeping on
the floor; my friend was in my bed. Sometime around 5AM my mom came
into the room saying, "Jill! You guys, get up, there's a tornado
coming! You have to come with us into the bathroom!" (It was an
interior bathroom, dead center in the house) Mom must have been very
frustrated, not to mention scared, because she couldn't rouse us.
Finally she said, "Well at least get Libby down on the floor with
you!" I remember mumbling, "Libby, get down on the floor" and as an
afterthought, "bring your pillow."

When we got up later that morning we found the tornado had cut a
swath down a hillside less than 2 blocks from our house. Luckily it
missed any homes and only touched down briefly, but she and I didn't
hear a thing.

Jill

As a child, my family lived in Altus OK. We had a neighborhood storm
shelter. There were tornadoes there all the time. Mom says one time she
came to wake me, then went to wake my brother. When she came back for me, I
was sound asleep again. She just grabbed me, bedsheets and all, and bundled
us off to the shelter with the rest of the family. Once time I actually was
awake, I remember throwing a fit because we weren't allowed to take our dog

I hope you're all safe tonight, MMJ. I see you've got tornado warnings
all over the place where you are (and we've got our fingers crossed
the storms have weakened when they get down in this direction in
another hour or two)



Jeanne Hedge, as directed by Natasha

============
http://www.jhedge.com

Jeanne Hedge wrote:
I hope you're all safe tonight, MMJ. I see you've got tornado warnings
all over the place where you are (and we've got our fingers crossed
the storms have weakened when they get down in this direction in
another hour or two)



Jeanne Hedge, as directed by Natasha

============
http://www.jhedge.com

We had hail, high winds and a heckuva time rounding up all *12* furrballs so
we'd know where they all are! Tennessee is *still* hiding under the sofa
da big chicken (he was joined for a bit by Weeble and Missy, the others were
locked in the bedroom, office or bathroom).

On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 21:00:05 -0500, "Magic Mood Jeep©"
wrote:

We had hail, high winds and a heckuva time rounding up all *12* furrballs so
we'd know where they all are! Tennessee is *still* hiding under the sofa
da big chicken (he was joined for a bit by Weeble and Missy, the others were
locked in the bedroom, office or bathroom).

Ditto us, in Scott Co (except for the hail part, and the 12 kitties).
Natasha slept through all the fireworks, I think (there's something to
be said at times for being nearly 19 years old and hard of hearing
g)

I had to go out to my brother's place in the country when it was still
approaching (just before the tornado warnings for Jackson and Jennings
Co (to our north) were dropped and just before they went up for
Jefferson Co (IN) to our east). There was an amazing cloud-to-cloud
lightning display going on, and it was very windy too. I fortunately
made it back home *just* before we got hit with what seemed like a
solid wall of rain! I don't mind driving at night, but I *do* mind
doing it (day or night) with that sort of a storm front coming in!

(you're in Brown Co, right?)



Jeanne Hedge, as directed by Natasha

============
http://www.jhedge.com

Jeanne Hedge wrote:

I lived through and survived the F5 that hit Moore, OK in 1999. After
that, I wasn't afraid of storms anymore. I realize now, how you have to
be *in the path*; and even then, they are so hit-and-miss. Our house
was untouched, but the houses behind us were leveled. 3500 homes were
destroyed, yet the injury/mortality rate was amazingly low, and the
majority of those were folks caught out in their cars.

Now *that* must hae been an "interesting" day... The Learning Channel
used to have a show where they'd ride around with EMTs and Paramedics
(kind of like "Cops"). They happened to be filming in OKC when all
that went down, and it made for really wild and scary programming.

It *was* interesting. In the aftermath we dealt with things I never
thought about before.
Most bizarre was, since the houses behind us were leveled, rats moved
into the neighborhood in droves. I guess they were after the rotting
household food in the rubble. Then cats everywhere, cats that had been
displaced by the storm or just strays, probably because of the rats!
Another thing I learned is, a tornado really does sound like a freight
train, just like they say. I was in the stairwell closet with two
arguing teenagers and three cats. If it hadn't been for that freight
train sound, I'd have never stayed in that closet.


I lived through the April 3, 1974 outbreak through Illinois, Indiana,
Kentucky and Ohio. Spent most of that day in an interior closet with a
school friend I'd gone to visit and her family and pets. On April 4 we
went to a neighboring town that had been hit to help out some friends
(got through the roadblocks because dad was a state trooper at the
time and we were in his patrol car). It was as you describe - the
houses on all 4 sides of our friends' house were damaged or
demolished, but the extent of the damage to their house was a bent TV
ariel. And a block away, it looked like absolutely nothing had
happened at all.

Yes! That's exactly the way it was in Moore.

Sherry

Another thing I learned is, a tornado really does sound like a freight
train, just like they say. I was in the stairwell closet with two
arguing teenagers and three cats. If it hadn't been for that freight
train sound, I'd have never stayed in that closet.
Sherry

Oddly enough, I, too, can verify the "fast train" sound of a
tornado. I was about 22, just after my first offspring arrived,
and the tv was talking about "tornados" and a warning to
local area. Being in a citiy *way* hip to *hurricanes* but
really dumb as to tornados (in my entire upbringing there,
none had ever hit there before, to my knowledge), we
went to bed and thought no more about it. About 2:30am,
I awoke to loud noise like a fast-moving train sounding
very near our house......but saw nothing ouitside,but I did
know there were NO railroad tracks nearby!. Morning
tv told us a tornado had cut a path 2 blocks away from
our house, straight down a busy (not at night) artery-street
in our section of town, destroying several storefronts and
overturning several empty police cars parked there. I
don't think that tornado was very big. I always thought
it very strange that they sound just like trains, after
actually hearing one in RL.

dnr wrote:
Another thing I learned is, a tornado really does sound like a
freight train, just like they say. I was in the stairwell closet
with two arguing teenagers and three cats. If it hadn't been for
that freight train sound, I'd have never stayed in that closet.
Sherry

Oddly enough, I, too, can verify the "fast train" sound of a
tornado. I was about 22, just after my first offspring arrived,
and the tv was talking about "tornados" and a warning to
local area. Being in a citiy *way* hip to *hurricanes* but
really dumb as to tornados (in my entire upbringing there,
none had ever hit there before, to my knowledge), we
went to bed and thought no more about it. About 2:30am,
I awoke to loud noise like a fast-moving train sounding
very near our house......but saw nothing ouitside,but I did
know there were NO railroad tracks nearby!. Morning
tv told us a tornado had cut a path 2 blocks away from
our house, straight down a busy (not at night) artery-street
in our section of town, destroying several storefronts and
overturning several empty police cars parked there. I
don't think that tornado was very big. I always thought
it very strange that they sound just like trains, after
actually hearing one in RL.

Yep, when the one ripped through about a mile from me in 1998, I sure did
hear the freight train. But there's also a warning siren on the corner so I
heard that first.

Jill

Jeanne Hedge wrote:
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 21:00:05 -0500, "Magic Mood Jeep©"
wrote:

We had hail, high winds and a heckuva time rounding up all *12*
furrballs so we'd know where they all are! Tennessee is *still*
hiding under the sofa da big chicken (he was joined for a bit by
Weeble and Missy, the others were locked in the bedroom, office or
bathroom).

Ditto us, in Scott Co (except for the hail part, and the 12 kitties).
Natasha slept through all the fireworks, I think (there's something to
be said at times for being nearly 19 years old and hard of hearing
g)


Tennessee is afraid of loud noises - thunder, fireworks, loud movies (he
will not be seen if DH is watching Black Hawk Down )


I had to go out to my brother's place in the country when it was still
approaching (just before the tornado warnings for Jackson and Jennings
Co (to our north) were dropped and just before they went up for
Jefferson Co (IN) to our east). There was an amazing cloud-to-cloud
lightning display going on, and it was very windy too. I fortunately
made it back home *just* before we got hit with what seemed like a
solid wall of rain! I don't mind driving at night, but I *do* mind
doing it (day or night) with that sort of a storm front coming in!


That light show was phenomenal, wasn't it? We watched a bit of it after the
worst of it passed us, and it was eerie. When I first saw it, I though it
was emergency lights (ambulance or fire trucks) being reflected on the
ultra-low cloud cover - but it was way too intermittent to be that, and then
I actually saw a thread of lightning spread throughout the lower layer.
Very pretty, but still frightening.

I *abhor* driving in rain as well


(you're in Brown Co, right?)



Monroe county, Northwest of Lake Monroe.

On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 09:51:22 -0500, "Magic Mood Jeep©"
wrote:

Jeanne Hedge wrote:
On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 20:59:43 -0600, "Pat"
wrote:

My greatest fear is tornados that strike in the night when I'm
asleep, but I am too tired to stay awake any longer tonight and
don't want to sleep in the dank basement which I have so far not had
time to clean. Would appreciate some purrs to keep me & the owners
safe tonight.

Pat, from one resident of "tornado alley" (albeit the eastern fringes)
to one in the middle of things - get a weather radio! You should look
for the kind that goes off like an alarm clock if there are
weather-related warnings in your area. Put it at your bedside, turn
the volume up, and you'll most certainly wake up!

(I once had one that would play the weather stations, but didn't have
an alarm function)



Jeanne Hedge, as directed by Natasha

============
http://www.jhedge.com

We had one of those, but had to toss it as it kept going off for the
simplest of *thunderstorms*, and we couldn't figure out how to change the
settings! Talk about annoying!


My current weather radio, purchased at Radio Shack, allows you to
choose both what geographical areas are covered (generally
corresponding to counties) and what types of warnings should cause the
radio to sound an alarm. You hook it up temporarily to your computer,
use a program supplied with the radio to make your choices, then
detach it from the computer. The radio has a 9-volt battery for
backup power to preserve the settings. You only have to enter them
again if the power is off for long enough that the battery goes dead.
If I remember correctly, I paid around $40.00 for the radio.

They have cheaper radios that lack the type-of-warnings feature, but
it is definitely worth the extra money, from my point of view. A
previous weather radio woke me up in the middle of the night several
times with flash flood warnings. Since my house is on top of a hill,
I don't need to hear about flash flood warnings until I get up in the
morning.

--
John F. Eldredge --
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria