We just spent our first week in a brand new house. We were getting ready to go to a graduation party on Sunday when I hear my wife talking on the phone to her parents. She had been in the basement working on the computer and I hear her yell, "Get down here, now!" My DW tends to overreact to things, and I asked what was going on...it seems there was a tornado that touched down about a mile from us. We had a spot under the basement stairs, so we all hung out there. I ventured back upstairs to grab the pocket sized weather radio that I'd had in one of my EDC bags. Back downstairs, I grabbed an emergency lighting kit that I'd put together during ice storms last winter. It was late afternoon, but under the steps was dark when the lights flashed on and off and I figured the cheap Wal Mart electronic glow sticks would help the kiddos feel safer. Found out that the only place to get a clear NOAA signal in our basement is by standing next to the egress window...and that was sketchy at times. Have to figure out a way to work that out. Our main weather radio hasn't been unpacked yet...

Pretty much all of my prep stuff is still packed in boxes...

Experiences like this shed light on areas of need in prep plans. Need to keep everything in that space...weather radio, glow sticks for the kids, something to sit on...maybe blankets, snacks...

The tornado that leveled that town in Iowa, Parkersburg...we're 15 miles from that. The boyfriend of the girl's graduation party we were going to that night lost a couple of relatives in that tornado. They weren't in the basement...the couple was old and the man was approximately 500 pounds, so he couldn't have gotten to the basement if he wanted to. They say it wouldn't matter though, because their entire house, including basement contents, got tossed.

One woman, from another town that got hit, talked about how quiet it was right before the twister pulled their house of its foundation...that sounded like a freight train.

My brother in law's house lost its roof and they lost two horse...ended up in a farmer's field across the road, all tangled in wire. They're guessing the twister was an F4, but I haven't heard for sure. Was on the ground for 43 miles...part of Parkersburg ended up in Wisconsin, 75 miles away.

In general, prep for this sort of thing sounds to me very similar to hurricane prep...food, FAK, water, radio, etc... (of course I live in tornado country, not hurricane country, so I could be wrong). The other thought that occurred to me is that we should each have our 72 hour kits in the space under the stairs too...in case the top of the house is gone and we have to go to a shelter. Of course, I don't have those kits put together yet...darn money...

This one hit pretty close to home for me. Watching the local news is good, if you can do it safely during a tornado warning, but they get their info from NOAA, so the radio seems like the fastest source of information.

Also realized we could barely hear the sirens in our new house...