Tornado Watch

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Hey gang!

Our county is under tornado watch until 8:00 PM.

I got caught in the rain with no umbrella this morning. Gonna happen again, maybe.


UPDATE: Tornado video from Springfield

Comments

[enhf94.livejournal.com]

I grew up in the midwest, where Watch meant "go to your basement immediately, do not pass go." That's not happening here on any of the severe weather warnings I've seen.

Anybody know why not? Possibilities:
1. Tornados are rare enough in Boston that we underestimate the threat?
2. Tornados tend to do less damage here, for reasons unknown?
3. Certified Smart People have changed the guidelines in the many years since I moved here?

...reporting live from my basement.

NB: IIRC, "watch" means favorable conditions, while "warning" means a tornado has been spotted.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

Combo of 1 and 2. I'm from Alabama, tornadoes kill people as far as I'm concerned.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Tornadoes are very rare in Massachusetts, and when they do appear it tends to be in Tornado Alley (approximately between Springfield and Worcester). Bostonians don't tend to consider them a significant threat.

The National Weather Service is right now tracking a tornado spotted this evening in Bellingham, which is the closest I've ever heard of one coming to Boston in twenty years.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

They're not that rare -- Mass. averages two per year.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

When you rank states by tornado frequency, Massachusetts comes in at #35. http://www.disastercenter.com/mass/tornado.html. They're just not that common.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Did you notice that Mass. is one of the smallest states, and that the page you quote says that per square mile, we come in fourteenth? :}

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Sure. I also noticed that for fatalities per square mile we come in first. I didn't see if they ranked us on tornadoes per unicycle, or on dollars of property damage per school crossing guard, but I'm sure those would be equally interesting statistics.

[ron_newman]

I'm from Ohio, and I recall watch meaning "don't do anything special", while warning meant "go to the basement".

[enhf94.livejournal.com]

Since I'm the only person in Boston in the basement right now, I wonder if you're right. But tornadoes can form in seconds, just as fast as the water swirling in your sink.

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

I'm also from the Midwest, and we usually didn't bother with the basement until a warning was issued, and mostly not even then (but our basement wasn't finished, so...)

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

In Cleveland, we we only went to the basement once in my childhood. The watches usually ended up being EPIC thunder and lightning storms that made we kids dance around, and made our grandma get on the floor and pray to sweet Jesus.

[ron_newman]

You're from ... Cleveland? I never knew that. Somehow had you associated with upstate New York. I lived in Akron from 3rd to 5th grade, Columbus thereafter (and the rest of my family is still there). Tornado warnings were a regular feature of a Columbus summer.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I lived in Ohio from birth to age 12, and the suburbs of Rochester NY from 13 to adulthood. So both were influential.

[josephineave.livejournal.com]

Yep, a watch is pretty much business as usual. I grew up in Arkansas and we didn't have basements. We spent our warning time in the central hallway under a mattress.

[closetalker11.livejournal.com]

Same here in Louisiana, the few times tornadoes were an actual threat (usually just after a hurricane).

[tater1112.livejournal.com]

At our house a watch meant "put your shoes on" because the basement was unfinished and fairly dirty. :)

[notpiecebypiece.livejournal.com]

I'm from Indiana, and that's how it was for me.

[ifotismeni]

it's definitely #1 mostly. i'm from around here and was at a work function in burlington when a warning went out - we were sitting near windows and going about our business. nobody batted an eye that we should be going to a window-less area/preferably a basement. honestly i think it's overall ignorance - we know how to handle snow but definitely tornadoes are super rare here.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I grew up in the most tornado-y part of the state, and we were taught that "watch" meant "pay attention" and "warning" meant "find a secure location, preferably a basement". There are probably different interpretations of what you do in response to those terms depending on how damaging to life and limb the weather in question has been in that area?

We had a few tornados in my childhood, and IIRC there were no fatalities and it was mostly property damage. Church steeples were particularly hard hit (as in today's south central Mass/northwestern Conn tornados).

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

yeah, i'm looking at my basement with some skepticism -- it has windows, and there's enough random junk in it that if i was in it and a tornado did hit, I'd probably be skewered by flying cruft or buried in bricks from the chimney. 'course, being upstairs wouldn't be any better.

aaa! there's nowhere safe! run for your lives! ;)

It not underestimating...

[mjperson.livejournal.com]

1. Tornados are rare enough in Boston that we underestimate the threat?

Not having shelters and sirens and all that other tornado protection stuff here doesn't mean we underestimate the threat. It means we properly estimate it as incredibly rare.