“…all residents in adjacent counties are advised to take shelter immediately. A tornado has been sighted, and may have already touched down. Stay tuned for more information…”

My 19 year old son looked at me with a certain level of teenage contempt. “C’mon, Mom, I want to watch a movie!” He tried to stick a tape in the VCR. I don’t often need to raise my voice to my children, but I turned to him and shouted: “LEAVE THE TV ALONE! THIS IS SERIOUS!”

My boy’s eyes registered surprise. He realized that his mother was on high alert, and that he might be in serious danger.

Continued below…

Max, from How to Get It Done, explains how to prepare yourself and your family for a tornado.

Just as the meteorologist was about to recount the specific location of the twister, our electrical power went out. I was near panic mode.  Standing in the darkness, listening to the distant siren wailing its warning, I realized that our tornado plan was woefully inadequate.

**********

My husband and I knew when we bought the farm back in the ’70s that the area was often hit by tornados.  Since we have five children, it seemed wise to make plans for disasters or emergencies.  The problem was that our hands were full, and we just never got around to putting together specific procedures to implement if faced with the unknown.  We only had a vague notion of what we would do if we encountered an unexpected crisis.

In all of our years on the farm, we never did run-throughs for emergencies, nor did we try to do a tornado drill.  We always just told our kids that if there was a tornado, run across the street and get into the deep ditch with the 5 foot culvert.   We didn’t know what else to do, since our old ramshackle farm house has no basement.

Had we run our tornado drill in March or April, we would have quickly changed our plans.  In the spring rainy season, the ditch is full to the top with run off and rain water.  No one in my family is a scuba diver, so we would have found ourselves up a creek, without an…oxygen tank?

 *************

I shouted to Richard to follow me.  The howling of the wind was intense.  I ran out of our front door, my heart feeling as if it would come out of my chest.  I slid and fell as I crossed our rutted dirt road.  I scraped my hands and knees as the jagged gravel tore my flesh.  I scrambled to my feet.  

The fury of the storm pressed me forward.  I knew I had only seconds to reach the safety of the culvert.  The pelting of the rain and hail told me that the tornado was upon us.  Fortunately, this storm was in early July, and there were only a few inches of mud in that pipe.  Thank God!

I spilled into the ditch and crawled into our sanctuary.  I spun around and looked out of the drain.  I exhaled in relief.  I was safe at last!

And then it hit me:  Where was Richard?!?

Continued in Tornado!!!–A Survivor’s Story (Part 3)

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Well, not any more! My attitude changed one day nearly 20 years ago, in the summer of 1991. Now I pay attention to the sky, weather reports, and I take plenty of precautions.

It all started on that July 4th weekend. Since Independence Day was celebrated on Thursday that year, we were blessed with a long holiday weekend. My daughter was in from Canada, celebrating U.S. & Canadian independence, plus visiting family and friends. We enjoyed typical early July weather in Michigan–hot and steamy. We needed to beat the heat, so Sunday afternoon we decided that we just had to go to the beach. The sun was hot, the water was cold, and we were enjoying PERFECT weather.


There was one troubling aspect to the day: we had heard there were severe storms in southwestern Michigan. We had no real concerns, because we live in southeastern Michigan, and we were sure the storms would be spent by the time they reached us. Who could look at our cloudless sky and predict the force and fury to come? After all, this was July, we should be well past tornado season.

I learned two lessons that day: clear blue skies can change in an instant, and there really is no hard and fast ‘tornado season’. Tornados can happen whenever the conditions are right.

The beach was crowded even with the threat of impending severe weather. No one else was concerned, so neither were we. We enjoyed the sand, the hot breeze, and all of the people. (People watching is our family hobby—try not to get near us, or we may make fun of you, too!)

My daughter, our family’s sensible one, decided that she should leave a little early for her four-hour drive back to Toronto. If the storm did move in, she wanted to be well ahead of it. In hindsight, I’m pleased that she has wisdom in the face of potential danger. Her decision to play it safe may have saved her life.

After she left, I felt a little lonely and down. I was certain that a bike ride was the remedy for my loneliness, so I hopped on the Huffy and rode off to chase away my blues.

When I left the house, the weatherman on TV was saying that we had a ‘tornado watch,’ which is significantly different than a full-blown ‘tornado warning.’ A tornado watch means that the conditions for a potential tornado exist; a tornado warning means that a confirmed funnel cloud or tornado has been spotted.


My opinion back then was that a tornado watch was of little concern.

I rode east on my bike. The wind was at my back, and it still felt quite warm. The eastern sky ahead had clouded up some, but it was still mostly sunny behind me. I rode for a mile, lost in thought about our family gathering over the weekend. I smiled as I thought about the fireworks, the food and the conversations.

When I finally turned back west to ride home, I could not believe how much the wind had picked up and how much the temperature had dropped—now I could feel the change. I was a bit surprised that I hadn’t noticed it when I was riding. Then I realized that I was out in the wide open, exposed to what could be a very serious storm. WOW!

(Story continued below…)

Pedaling back into that wind was a workout. By the time I got back home, the entire western horizon was filled with dark and ominous clouds. I hurriedly put my bike in the old shed and ran to take the clothes off the line (gotta save money where you can on the farm!). I scrambled to get the laundry inside before the rain started. The laundry room door has a large westward facing window, providing me with a perfect vantage point to observe the changing sky.

A stormy sky has a certain attractive beauty that draws me to it. The rolling and pitching of the clouds, the swirling colors and sheer force of nature are almost mesmerizing. Those black clouds were drawing closer, and I could see a greenish tint in the sky as well. I snapped out of my rapture, and I began to realize the real danger that I was in. I ran into our living room and twisted the knobs on our antique TV. The tube wasn’t warmed up yet, but I could hear the weatherman say (with serious concern in his voice) that the watch was now upgraded to a WARNING…


Tornado!!!–A Survivor’s Story (Part 2)

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