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mac60 05:31 AM 04-07-2010
This week The Weather Channel is campaining Tornado Safety Awareness Week. Just wondering, do you all have your tornado safety procedures in place.

Just wondering:
Do you live in an active tornado area?
Has a tornado ever hit your town/city?
How many times do the tornado sirens typically go off in your town each year?
What are your plans should the threat occur? Where do you go in your home?

Usually thru the months of May thru August, we have quite a few tornado watches in our area. We may have have 2 to 4 tornado warnings in our season.

A tornado took the top of the clock off the courthouse off over 40 years ago. They say our town sits in a valley.

Our tornado sirens go off probably 2 to 4 times per season. Usually it is later in the day, the sirens have never went off during dc hours here.

If there was a threat of a tornado, we would all pile into the bathroom, which has no windows and is all interior walls, although not exactly in the center of our home. We do not have a basement, but a crawl space, and my own children and I have actually went to the crawl space and took cover before when the sirens went off.

I also have a police scanner that I monitor during threatening weather. I know it is going to get bad when they call out the area towns for weather watch.
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emosks 05:52 AM 04-07-2010
We just did our first tornado drill of the year yesterday when we had some pretty nasty weather here in W. Michigan!! The kids did great! We all found our "buddy" and walked into the bathroom in the basement and "took cover".
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momma2girls 05:55 AM 04-07-2010
I have always heard under your basement steps is a very safe place as well. I actually finished off a room under my basement steps, just for this.
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Unregistered 06:48 AM 04-07-2010
We had to take cover last May. It wasn't a tornado but some sort of inland hurricane, an
el derecho? Really nasty sustained winds for a long time.
Tornado sirens went off during nap time, we went to the basement.
They stopped, we waited, went back upstairs to lay back down. Doo dee doo dee doo.
15 minutes later the wind picks back up and I start smelling the tree sap.
Oh crap.
Sirens start going again and we go back downstairs. This time I grabbed the laptop and we just sat there watching Finding Nemo while all hell broke loose upstairs.
They were little troopers. I have a bag in the basement with extra towels and blankets for them to cover up with, books, flashlight, bottled water and crackers.
No real damage done to our house, just shingles and a lot of big giant branches in the yard. Oh, the car got scratched all to hell from shingles.
We just sat around eating cookies watching traffic lined up in front of the house. No communication with anybody because even the cell phone towers were knocked down. Parents eventually made it to pick up their kids.
We had water and gas, but no electricity for 4 days.
A lot of houses were squished by trees, and there are still out of town roofers in the area.
It really sucked and we all get a little twitchy when the wind starts picking up.
But I always leave my laptop sitting on the counter with a big charge on the battery and a kid friendly movie in it. That thing helped us all keep it together.
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originalkat 06:50 AM 04-07-2010
We are in Kansas so we do get Tornados. I have seen them in the distant horizon a few times in my life and they have hit our city. Typically they tend to go through the south side of town and I live on the North so none have hit my property.
We usually get several watches and warnings throughout the Tornado season. I have never had it happen during daycare hours either, but we would go to the basement. We are required to have both fire and tornado drills monthly.
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jen 07:22 AM 04-07-2010
We go in to the laundry room. We have a fridge in there, diapers, blankets, first aid kit, radio and flashlight! We are in Minnesota and get a few a year. They do test the sirens on Wednesday so that is when we generally do a tornado drill.
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momofsix 10:02 AM 04-07-2010
In MI we're required to do a drill once a month during tornado season. I usually do it when they test the wanring system, first Fri of the month at noon. That way the kids are familiar with the sound and know what it means. We haven't had a tornado touch down here in a LONG time, but you never know. I have a box in our basement bathroom with crackers, flashlight, books...just in case. Thanks for reminding us Mac60!
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actaktmdt 10:12 AM 04-07-2010
Originally Posted by originalkat:
We are in Kansas so we do get Tornados. I have seen them in the distant horizon a few times in my life and they have hit our city. Typically they tend to go through the south side of town and I live on the North so none have hit my property.
We usually get several watches and warnings throughout the Tornado season. I have never had it happen during daycare hours either, but we would go to the basement. We are required to have both fire and tornado drills monthly.
ah yes the good old days (I grew up in Newton) I remember spending many a nights as a kid sleeping in our basement. I will never forget when a nearby town (andover) was torn apart when I was in 1st grade. I had a specialist doctors appointment that day, so I didnt have to go to school and I remember driving around seeing the devistation. The closest I have been to being in one was staying at Grandma's one afternoon at about 3 pm the Tornado turned back the opposit direction it was coming from and was less than a half a mile away from the house.
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