According to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

"The current average lead-time for tornado warnings is 13 minutes."

http://www.noaa.gov/features/protecting/tornados101.html


What can you do within that 13 minutes timeframe?

Certainly argues for having a shelter pre-stocked (whether a below-ground shelter or interior bathroom) with flashlight, first-aid, battery-powered radio, etc.

I've also noted in the images out of Oklahoma that even the worst-hit vehicles at least seem to be intact, as opposed to the residential homes which were obliterated. Argues for having sturdy leather work gloves and first aid, blanket/towels in cars to use in the aftermath of your own home's damage or to help rescue others in the debris.

If you were now living in tornado alley, what would you put in your child's school bag (backpack) that might be helpful if they were trapped in the rubble of a school?

Seems to me that a whistle, bandanna, bandaids, little flashlight would be good things for them to have at all times and especially in a crisis. Of course, they may not be near their bag when something happens but they might be.

I'll be adding OKC to my litany in response to the question: why prepare?

As little time as 13 minutes seems, there is zero notice for an earthquake or terrorist attacks.


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Tips from NOAA:

Indoors:

Abandon mobile homes — they are not safe even when tied down. Go to a designated shelter
Go to a basement or interior room on the lowest floor (bathroom or closet without windows, under stairs). Get under a sturdy piece of furniture.
Cover yourself with a mattress or blanket
Put on sturdy shoes
Put infants in car seats (indoors!)
If you have time, gather prescription medications, wallet and keys.
DO NOT open your windows!


In a vehicle:

Leave the vehicle for sturdy shelter or drive out of the tornado’s path
DO NOT hide under overpasses — they provide no shelter
Lie flat in a ditch (last-resort).


Outdoors:

Find a culvert or cave.
Find something to hang onto.
Lie flat in a ditch.
Cover your head.

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Whoa, when you say the vehicles seem to be intact, do you need to qualify that statement? Were the cars that were in tact right next to buildings that were obliterated? Did those particular buildings have unusually weak structures?

I initially read that statement as meaning it is best to stay in your car or leave your house to get to your vehicle. Is that right? This article says you should not stay in your car during a tornado:

http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-bl...a-tornado/48591

This is one reason why I always carry a man bag on my person that includes things that are "better than nothing." What's odd to me is that even in California I can't have a conversation with anybody and explain the reasoning about earthquakes or whatever. People would look at me like I'm crazy. Note that I live in the same area where an earthquake collapsed the SF Bay Bridge. It should be odd to see men who do not carry a man bag. Regardless, I have to say I carry a man bag because I don't like carrying stuff in my pockets, which is also true.

Dagny...a ball chain necklace with a whistle and Photon (Fenix E01 etc), plus a bandana would be very good on body EDC for students in tornado country... never mind the back pack... a metallic "dog tag" with name, parent contact number and any medical conditions included with the neck chain....a "skate board" helmet covering the rear of the head would be a good inclusion to the back pack along with a pair of safety glasses for flying debris...real shoes not sandals...

This is where I always say don't dump your wallet and keys in a landing zone by the front door of the house like many unprepared suggest. Those should be on you at all times (as well as your phone)

If for some reason I am away from my purse, I have, on me, the following: Medical I.D. bracelet, Fox 40 Classic, cell phone [I may not get a connection in an emergency] and anxiety medication.

Jeanette Isabelle

My point was that for storing gloves/first-aid, etc. a vehicle may be easier to locate after the tornado hits than stuff in your obliterated house or office .

Vehicles are at least identifiable. It looks like even after the OKC tornado, I could probably identify my SUV even if it had been crushed. I might still be able to get some survival gear out of it if the storm didn't strip everything out of the interior.


A vehicle is obviously a VERY BAD place to be during a tornado.


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Thirteen minutes is a fair amount of time, although you certainly need a prepared course of action so that you can maximize the time. It is, of course, effectively much shorter if you are responsible for others. As one who has to be prepped for earthquakes, I am somewhat envious.

Consider that tornadoes do not spring out of nowhere, at least with current forecasting techniques.There is still a threat today. I would be wearing sturdy shoes and be in condition red or close to it, if I were in the affected region.

A helmet of almost any kind would seem to be a useful thing to wear.

Might look stupid up until the time the house really does cave in.

Motorcycle, bicycle, construction, football--- almost anything could potentially help.

I've only sat in our basement a few times due to tornadic activity in the area. Sat there with construction hard hats on, flashlights in hand and the handle installed on the natural gas shutoff valve......

for those of you that are educators... get your school district engineers to evaluate the blueprints of your facility to identify the strongest interior, load bearing walls...orientation of roof support beams...locations of roof mounted air conditioning units... have your custodial teams mark the baseboards with a distinct "tornado funnel" stencil and direction providing arrow marking which wall to use to take shelter near...especially important if you are out of your home classroom...

Tornadoes scare me spitless. Unless you are 100% sure of the direction they are heading, which way do you run? Not many here where I live, but we had some not too long ago.

I can deal with hurricanes, lightning storms, blizzards, zombies, floods, fires and other natural events. Poop on tornadoes. I try to live where they have very few.

Before the 13-minute warning, your area probably has been under tornado watch for hours, which just means the weather conditions are favorable for producing tornadoes. This is when you should get your "tornado" gear together if they're not in one place already. In other words, you execute step one of the plan. So if you hear the siren, you execute the rest of the plan.

In my case, as soon as I get a watch, I get everything ready -- in addition to my survival kit, I also have my laptop (can't live without it). Then as soon as I get a warning, I head to the shelter area right away as I continue to monitor the weather radio.

There was a segment in the coverage yesterday where a reporter was interviewing a lady whose husband was part of a local recovery effort for an individual who left his car to take shelter in a building (which appeared to have been a gas station). The victim's SUV looked intact, sitting in the midst of twisted gas station.

There are few rules that can't be broken by a tornado.

Ditto. Tornados are rare around here, and not huge when they do happen, but, geesh! We've had perfect conditions for the past 24 hours of so, but I don't usually give it much thought. Don't have to in these parts and I like that.

When it comes to stuff to put in your kid's school backpack, I'd spend a little time trying to make sure your school actually let's your kid have that pack while in class. All the elementary schools I've been in have a desperate cloak room or hallway where coats and packs are kept. If we were in tornado or earthquake territory, I'd want my kids to keep the packs, and emergency stuff, on their chair backs.

That said, I'm still working on getting our schools to let the kids keep a sweater or jacket in their chairs AND let them grab those in a fire alarm situation. Most schools don't even seem to have a blankets to keep the kids warm and dry I've seen fire drills in the fall and winter, where the kids are standing around in a cold rain waiting for the all clear. In a real situation, emergency services might show up with stuff if the event was on a small scale, but I prefer my kid to be a less dependant than that.

The only times I remember these were in high school. If I'd known then what I know now, I would have refused to stand out there freezing.

High school kids seems to have the advantage of carrying their backpacks from class to class. I was one of those goody goodies who always waited it out. Hated getting in trouble so skipping never occurred to me until it was too late.

If you want to live where very few tornadoes happen, you'd better head west. Or north.

See a map of all killer tornadoes since 1950.

I think the sage advice of the late Jim Croche "...don't spit into the wind" might also apply here.

Good advice. You will avoid tornadoes but your exposure to earthquakes will increase. Of course, work on a high tech earthquake warning system is underway. The system might give you about sixteen seconds advance warning (unless you are at the epicenter).

BTW, is there a record of the total number of fatalities depicted on that most interesting map? I dare say it might reach into the hundreds or thousands.

Actually, you still have tornadoes in California, but they are wimpy. Some years ago, our local Doppler radar detected rotary motion in a winter storm. Listening to the early morning radio and realizing that the rotating cloud was generally southwest of our home, I gathered my wife and daughter in our interior hallway and explained the situation. Later that day, a massive landslide caused fatalities nearby, in the beachside community of La Conchita.

If you follow the link at the bottom of the map to the NOAA Storm Prediction Center at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/#data and scroll down to "Severe Weather Database Files (1950-2012)" it has links to the actual data files. You might have to total up fatalities yourself, but that should be easily doable if you import the "comma separated value" files into Excel.

Also, a further note regarding JBMat's comment: Further up on that NOAA page are maps depicting "Annual Average Number of Tornadoes by State" and "Annual Average Number of Tornado Deaths by State". It would appear that on a 30 year average there are more tornadoes per year in OK (57) than NC (26), but about the same number of deaths (3 for both OK and NC). So based on historical experience, JB's odds of dying in a tornado are actually about the same in NC as in OK.

Just one more reason to move to Colorado or New Mexico ; ).

Living here in tornado land has it's interesting moments at times, but the chances of actually being hit my one is very low.

This past weekend we were out in the camper with the girls in the driveway. I woke up at 1am hearing the winds blowing like crazy, checked the phone and noticed we were under a tornado watch. That ended the camper sleepover. One place you definitely don't want to be in severe weather is an RV or trailer.

Everyplace has it's issues. When I lived in Texas and Maryland I was hit by hurricanes. They are almost as fun as tornadoes plus they last for 2 days and flood everything. At least the tornadoes are small and relatively short lived.

When my wife was in CA she got hit by the big earthquake. Volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest. Wildfires out west. Pick your poison I guess.

While I am obviously concerned about tornadoes living where I do, I don't stress too much. We have a concrete safe room and I have insurance. As long as my family is ok the rest will be replaced.

You might be basing this on statistics - which is fine.

But 5 years ago the town of Windsor, CO. was destroyed by tornado.
It's 12 miles from my house. The twisters closest point of approach to us was about 5 miles.

We don't generally get the mile-wide monsters and our twisters are usually spawned during daylight hours but..... still.

But in the overall scheme of probabilities it's my commute to/from work that's most likely to kill me from non-health causes.

The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang has an interesting article on the current state of tornado prediction and efforts to improve it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capi...better-prepare/


The also thought-provoking blog about preparedness that was referenced in the above:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/a-survival-plan-for-americas-tornado-danger-zone/


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So, even if you're in a high-frequency tornado area, the chance of dying from a car accident in those areas is still higher?

Anyway, tornadoes still scare me more. In a car, there seems to be more control over the situation, for example, by being a conscientious driver without distractions. The same goes with airplane flight. I consider driving to be safer because I feel like I have more control over my fate.

Welcome to the club. The realization of how little the trouble I would have gotten in then didn't set in until years later. Now days, my response would have been suspend me and see how fast I can call the paper and TV stations. "News at 6: school kids forced to stand outside in current weather for a DRILL!"

13 minutes assumes you did know - most people inside a building will neither hear the sirens no be listening to the radio. I assume 5 mins warning.

My County has the facility to send alert messages to cell and landline phones; this may increase the warning time and/or get it to a broader number of people. It reduces the dependence on siren alerts.

This seems to be a good idea, but I don't know how common it is with other Counties and Cities.

Only problem is that you have to "opt in" by signing up with the County. No opt ins needed for the siren.

A few years ago I had a police scanner wired up at my desk at work and was listening as a series of t-storms was moving thru the area.

I heard a county Deputy report swirling motion in the clouds above the intersection next to my workplace.

We recieved no notification at all of anything all day via the management/security channels even though the NWS had posted Tornado Watches for the area.

Conclusion-
Warnings might be helpful if they are offered but in reality - you're on your own Jack!

(I've found that to be the case in simple workplace safety as well as our Facilities people have endangered many people many times w/o management noticing. When I report the issues I get in trouble.)

Working of equipping my 'shelter.' in the basement.

radio, blanket, tools, water, lights all in bags (damp basement)

^ That's what we've done, Teacher. After watching an episode of Rescue Heroes with my son when he was about four, he became scared of tornadoes, even though they are extremely rare here, and not very big when they do happen. (There was a micro burst a couple of hours from here a couple of days ago, btw.)

We talked to him about our realistic risks were, and then outfitted the basement, to act as an emergency shelter.

Water, blankets, light, food and cooking, first aid, hygiene, etc. are all ready and waiting down there, along with a plethora of repair and clean-up supplies

"Just one more reason to move to Colorado or New Mexico"

Oh heck no! I ran into tornado storms in both places. Both states have other severe weather issues, but when the tornadoes hit, they popped quick, moved fast, and folks caught in the paths of those funnels had little to no warning.

Never been a tornado here in Anchorage, and very rarely any lightning. One big earthquake every 50 years, a little over a hundred people killed a little over 150 people, mostly by tsunami, which would afford much more warning response time.

Here in Anchorage, not too many tall buildings that have to contend with seismic.

Would be a wild ride, but I doubt the body count will be that high when the next one pops. Some are predicting the next big Alaska earthquake could approach force 10. We figure that would be enough wave motion that if you were laying in bed it would bounce you off the ceiling, maybe even through it.

My office is on the second floor of the old Alaska RR building, which is a reinforced concrete building that survived the 9.2 quake in 64 and is still in good shape. Masonry isn't my preferred structure material for seismic resistance, but if it is thick enough it is more like a rock than a hollow chocolate bunny.

No matter where you live, there is a hazard profile - something about which you had best be informed. There is severe weather of some sort everywhere, and fire is a universal hazard. There days, with weather related events, you should have some sort of advance warning - I understand there were some more tornado related fatalities in Oklahoma, but there was advanced warning that conditions were ripe for tornadoes there, as well as whatever immediate notifications may have been provided.

There aren't many places where you can forget about earthquakes, for that matter, although the probability varies considerably.

Here in the UK, most modern fire alarms do not use traditional bells but use electronic sounders that can be programmed to emit various sounds including a passable electronic imitation of a traditional bell.

I presume that USA fire alarms are similar.

It might therefore be worth use of an alternative sound on an existing fire alarm system to give the tornado warning in schools or large workplaces.

This would be especially useful in districts equipped with tornado warning sirens but where the sirens may not be reliably heard in a large complex. It would be a simple matter to trigger the tornado warning when needed for practice purposes or for a real tornado.

(I know that this is an old thread, but having recently been testing a new fire alarm system, it got me thinking)

Assuming the system is sufficiently programmable, it might be better to use a recorded voice to give a specific warning and command, something like "TORNADO WARNING TAKE IMMEDIATE COVER" and have it repeat several times.

The problem I envision with different sounds for different warnings is the learning curve/confusion factor among people, e.g. "that's a horn---does that mean evacuate or shelter in place? Does anyone remember?"

From the fire drills I've been in, its hard enough to get people to know that it (the bell or whatever) means that they are supposed to leave. I always saw a lot of people standing around looking confused. . .

13 minutes ... throw some snacks, water and a wallet into a car, grab the family, and DRIVE AWAY!

GOT an escape route?? :-)

Pete

Fortunately, I don't live in tornado country, but I understand this is not a good idea - too much depends upon the storm track, which is relatively unpredictable....

We actually did that on the orders of the county when I was at work one day. Work was officially evacuated and the buildings closed. We all got in our cars and sat in the street because the exit routes couldn't handle the volume.

I swung around and went right back into the parking lot.Then walked over to the pizza joint and had lunch.

Fortunately it was a misfire of the reverse 911 system and there was never any toxic chemicals in the air. (The cause was some tile guys spilled their glue bucket at a facility 3 miles away- downwind.) I knew this because I'd been listening to my scanner at the time.

You don't need much more than a place to go that's safer than where you are.

A bottle of water, a flashlight and a blanket, all tucked into a tight-packed bag that's located in the school, or better yet, in the shelter.
It's much easier to stock a shelter up than to expect individuals to have what they might need on hand.