Storm cellars are terrific, but useless unless people are home to use them or aware they are in the path of an approaching tornado. Cannot begin to imagine the terror of being on the road and seeing a funnel cloud coming my way. Let alone some of those F4/F5 monsters that tore across the South last week.

And as has been mentioned, its imperative to have situational awareness when conditions are ripe for tornadoes. But God help you if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. There just isn't a lot of notice.

A few of my friends will be getting weather alert radios for Christmas this year. People east of the Rockies should have them -- at home, office and in vehicles. Around here, the tornado alerts started during the evening rush.

One of these friends had no idea she was driving toward two tornadic cells when I got her on the phone last Wednesday afternoon as she was going home to Annapolis. Another on the other side of the Beltway went to sleep early that night and did not know until the next morning that she very nearly got a call from me at 11:00p because a tornadic cell was headed for her house (it weakened a bit and went a bit west of her just before I was going to call. She was awakened by severe thunder and lightning. Another stood in his backyard Thursday morning and watched a tornadic cell go by just north, a funnel dropped a few miles east.

Meanwhile, when the outbreak began around here I had retrieved my $20 Midland pocket weather radio from a camping gear bag and stayed tune to TV and two weather websites. When I went to bed I had the weather radio on my nightstand set for "Alert" -- sure enough it went off when a flood warning was issued early in the morning.

Here's the $20 weather radio that I've been using for the past couple years (up $2 in the past week, to $22):

http://www.amazon.com/MIDLAND-HH50-Pocke...2036&sr=8-6

Of course, I can buy this and extra batteries for friends but I'm not optimistic they'd use it when they needed to. You can lead a horse to water....

The morning of last Wednesday's tornado outbreak, the Washington Post "Weather Gang" had posted an article on the five most destructive tornadoes that have hit in and around DC. I watched the September 2001 tornado approach the Mall before it jumped the city and landed at the University of Maryland in College Park, where it picked up a car occupied by two sisters and hurled it over an eight-story building. That certainly impressed upon me that cities aren't immune to tornadoes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capi...1BAyE_blog.html