Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Something I Just Don't Understand
I've had to adjust to a few things living here in the state of Missouri (see my entry about ticks...) and one of those things has been tornadoes. Like ticks tornadoes just don't really happen in the Rocky Mountains so I had never learned what one is supposed to do while there is one raging outside. Since moving here there have been at least five, possibly six tornadoes (I'm not sure if the last was actually a tornado but it was incredibly stormy.) On my second tornado this is what I did: Listened to the alert going off from the base informing us that there was a severe weather alert out and that the main gate was closed (coded in the form of a wailing siren with brief pauses - what with the dark sky it felt really WWII air raid alertish), gathered the children, blankets and a bag of fun cereal I had randomly purchased earlier and headed for the bathtub where we sat eating cereal and pretending to have fun for an hour until the alert was over, (by the way Emmuska is a bathtub hog) while in the bathtub I pulled out my laptop and started researching the details of the tornado in our area (what part were specifically on alert, for how long, etc.) as well as the best procedure to take during a tornado. While doing this research I learned that during a tornado alert one should go to their basement, if they don't have a basement they should go to an inside hall, if no inside hall than the innermost room (our bathroom qualifies as that for us). It then proceeded to outline the procedure for if you live in a mobile home. "Get out and go to a substantial building, if a substantial building is unavailable then find a ditch and lie flat in the ditch." At which point I was thinking 'you have got to be kidding me!' My response was so strong because there are tons of mobile homes around here. There are at least three mobile home parks along the road to drive to base - probably a few more beyond the immediate road. I know that there are a few more throughout the immediate area as well as many properties where the land is a personal parcel but the home there on is still a mobile home unit. And I can't help but wonder 'Why in the name of...would you chose to live in something less safe than an open ditch in the event of a tornado when said tornadoes happen regularly? I mean they call it 'Tornado Alley' for a reason.'
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3 comments:
The most hated experience of my life was the year I lived in Kansas mostly due to the horrible weather (and that there isn't a tree in the entire state). As an apartment dweller at the time, whenever a tornado came rolling through (pretty much April through September), we gathered ourselves, our cat and a radio and parked it in the bathroom. It sucked. Big time. It also seemed that EVERY TIME there was a tornado, another trailer park bit the dust. They are tornado magnets.
From what I know from Midwest living, I concur with Amy: t.parks are tornado magnets. In fact, my friend who was in school for weather forecasting says there's a joke between meteorologists- not people that study meteors but the people who like to guess about the weather. I don't remember the joke but it's funny... and true. Those are the best kind of jokes... Too bad I can't remember it. Dang!
Deja Vu! I feel like we've had this conversation before...wait a second! This is like, the only conversation we've had in 6 months! Yes, I am finally 'in' on one of your blogs!! :)
Although I did have a crazy tick experience, at least here we don't have to worry about tornadoes...yay.
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