Public service announcement.

Let me share with you something that I always sort of knew but truly learned only yesterday:

If a tornado strikes your neighborhood, there is a good chance there will be no "warning." 

No siren, no announcement on TV of a sighting in some nearby county.  One minute everything's normal, the next -- tornado.

I grew up in Ohio, a place that is at least as tornado-prone as Minnesota where I live now.  The Tornado Drill was a basic fact of my elementary-school education.  The sirens went off, we lined up and filed into the windowless, concrete-block hallway where we sat against the wall with our knees up and covered our heads with our arms. 

We didn't drill at home, but the TV was always on, and once or twice a year there was Tornado Warning In Our County.  We turned the volume up loud on the TV so we could hear it from the basement, where we sat under the stairs until the appointed time to emerge.

None of these, however, prepared me for yesterday's event.  You want to know what prepared me for yesterday's tornado touchdown in South Minneapolis?  Home videos of tornadoes.

Because it went like this.  It was raining, but not thundering -- indeed, the boys had been playing in the rain in the back yard for the hour after lunch.  I was teaching Milo math, Mary Jane was watching Signing Time, Oscar was at the kitchen table working.  The lights flickered and went out, which was a good thing because it got our attention -- we looked up, and the kids started to exclaim excitedly and wonder if it was a Really Bad Storm.  About forty-five seconds later the wind kicked up.  I went to close the window and saw --

You know in home videos of tornadoes how there's always, not in the funnel cloud but in front of the silly cameraman whose wife can be heard begging him to turn that damn thing off and get in the basement,  a bunch of random swirling debris? 

Well, I saw stuff like big branches and shingles and jagged pieces of wood in the air, flying over the roof of the house across the street.    I think there may have been an instant of calculation -- Have I ever seen a normal wind blow stuff higher than that house over there?   No?  Well, okay then -- and I yelled for the kids to run to the basement, and they obeyed immediately (thanks for going off, power!)  but by the time we actually all got down there under the stairs, it was over.  We really did not "make it down in time."  But our house was not damaged, so it turned out that we had all the time there was.

Even as I was herding the children into the basement, part of my mind was going, "Don't be silly!  There can't be a tornado because there wasn't a warning!  Or a siren!"  This is the one problem with drills, with warnings and sirens.  They lull you into thinking there will probably be a warning or a siren.

Of course there was a warning after that, and a siren.  Where do you think the warnings come from?  Somebody has to see a tornado and report it.  That "somebody" didn't hear a siren first, he saw the tornado.  Yesterday those first reports were from my neighbors.

Will upload some pictures later.  Meanwhile, here is the Strib article.  And here is a very good article by a local meteorologist underscoring the importance of not waiting for warnings and taking responsibility for your own safety:

 The Minneapolis tornado is making a lot of people very, very uncomfortable. It's one thing if a tornado forms over fields with little/no warning, but within 1 mile of the MSP International Airport and 1-2 miles from downtown Minneapolis? That's an entirely different scenario, the definition of an "OH CRAP" moment. No watches or warnings were in effect at the time of the apparent touchdown. To the best of my knowledge no local TV station was on the air warning of dangerous conditions bearing down on the Minneapolis skyline. Worst case? No, the IDS would not have tipped over. But outer glass walls could have been stripped, shattered - raining deadly debris on pedestrians below, severing the Skyway system, turning cars (and buses) on the Nicollet Mall into projectiles. ...

It's sobering to hear, but it's the truth: to some degree all of us are on our own. We are responsible for our own safety. If you see the cloud base rotating and lowering to the ground, in front of your eyes (accompanied by your ears popping and a growing roar, like thunder that won't go away) do yourself, and future generations, a big favor and get your butt to a safe spot, preferably below ground, below grade. Remember, the threat isn't being lofted into the sky like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. It's standing up and being hit on the head by a tiny pebble traveling at 150 mph. Blunt head trauma. Flying debris. That's how most people become tornado victims. In light of yesterday's scare vow to maintain control over situational awareness, rely on your own wits (in addition to the NWS and local media) and realize that, in the end, YOU are responsible for keeping yourself out of trouble.

Oh, and a father-and-daughter pair who happen both to be  meteorologists happened to have a video camera and recorded it from a hotel room.  Here ya go.

Comments

[Alicia]

That makes me thankful for growing up in Oklahoma. . .where tornadoes are so common that the weathermen stay on their toes and there usually IS a warning and siren first! Of course, familiarity breeds contempt. . .and I've ignored more tornado warnings than I can count.

[bearing]

I remember one night when we were working late on homework in the computation labs at Ohio State and the sirens were going off. One of my fellow students, who grew up on a farm in one of the rural counties east of Columbus, shook his head when somebody asked him if they got a lot of false warnings where he came from. "Where I come from," he said, "we ARE the warning. First the tornado hits us. Then the weather people know there's a tornado and they put on the sirens in the city. Where do you think the warnings come from? The sirens don't just 'go off' when there's a tornado, you know. First the tornado hits somewhere, and then somebody has to turn on the siren to warn OTHER people."

[Christy P.]

I grew up in Iowa, and I recall many nights waking up in a different spot than where I went to bed because my parents had scooped us into the basement from our bunkbeds. There were even a few nights where we started the night in sleeping bags in the basement. Now that I live in the Intermountain West, tornadoes are A Rare Event, but the last one hit smack in downtown and took out a chunk of the convention center. Tornadoes scare me. I'm glad that everyone is ok in your household and neighborhood.