April is tornado awareness month and tornados have always been something that I have been scared of since I was a little girl. In fact, to this day- the sound of wind chimes (like in the movie Twister) send chills down my spine (cue a flying cow)…
But in all seriousness, I trace my fear of tornados back to when I was little and my parents best friend’s house (down the street) was blown apart by a tornado. Literally BLOWN. APART. Oh, and there was that one time, when I was about 8 or 9, that my mom and I were driving to my swim practice when we had to pull over on the freeway because one went right over us. I remember my mom saying something about not being sure if we should get out and go lay in a ditch or something. We ended up staying in the car while hail pelted against the windshield and wind howled around us and we lived to see another day- but at the time, the two of us were both very frightened.
In Wisconsin, we’re lucky that we don’t have hurricanes or earthquakes- but wind is no joke here.
In fact, it is fairly normal have about 23 tornados per year.
And just like my mom wasn’t certain if the best course of action was for us to stay in the car, grounded by the tires, or make a beeline for the ditch because it was on lower ground- according to the National Weather Service, there are a lot of misconceptions and old wives tales out there when it comes to tornado safety.
I’m going to summarize 5 of them for you here:
1. Don’t seek shelter under an over-pass
There are several reasons why this is a bad idea, so I guess it is a good thing that we weren’t near one when we were on our way to swim practice that day!
First- deadly debris can be blasted through the tunnel space at a high rate of speed, which is very dangerous.
Second, the bridge itself may fail and collapse down onto people under it- especially in today’s day and age of our aging infrastructure.
Third, whether or not the tornado hits- parking in the middle of lanes of traffic is illegal and dangerous- especially when there is low visibility. Imagine a truck (or just a regular vehicle) coming barreling down the road and hitting you because you stopped under a bridge thinking that everyone would have the same idea to stop and wait out the storm as well. You can also create a situation where you have blocked emergency vehicles from saving lives.
2. Yes, tornados (and lightening) CAN strike in the same place twice!
There are plenty of examples of this. So don’t think that you are safe just because you have had a tornado fly over your house once before.
3. It doesn’t matter which corner you hide in
There is/was an old wives tale that said that all tornados move to the North East and therefore the best place to hide from a tornado was the South-West corner of your house, since it would pass over that part first and blow all of the debris outward from there.
However, sorry to burst your bubble (see what I did there?!?!) but tornados can approach from any direction and they spin debris in all directions, so this is just plain false.
The best place to put yourself is under an I-Beam or heavy work bench in the lowest level of your house. Make sure you are as far away from windows as possible.
4. Don’t open your windows
No- you do NOT need to open your windows before a tornado. The pressure inside your house being the same as the pressure outside your house is not going to save anything. The danger of you being near your windows trying to frantically open them as a risky storm approaches is much worse.
5. Tornados happen year-round
Tornados can happen 12-months out of the year. While they “optimally” happen from April – September, don’t forget about storm safety all year round!
Is it a tornado after all?
Also, it is very important to note that just because there is HUGE damage to trees, crops, and/or homes from wind- it might not mean there was a “tornado”. IF you were to look at the damage after straight line winds, you would see the debris, like uprooted trees are usually all in parallel rows. These down-bursts/straight-line winds can be just as destructive as tornados, it just always seems like the “tornado” has gotten the bad reputation! Straight-line winds can and have gotten up to 150mph which can be the equivalent of an EF3 tornado- so just because there is significant damage, it doesn’t mean that there was a “tornado”. We also have the infamous “Derecho” that you may have heard more and more about over the past few years.
In fact- southern Minnesota and southern Wisconsin are actually called (in weather circles) “Derecho Alley” because we have the greatest number of Derechos in the entire country.
Derechos are created by merging thunderstorm cells into a cluster that extends for many miles- we’re talking a width from 20-65 miles and a length that reaches 100 miles or more. Derechos travel for 500-600 miles. In other words, these are when the radar lights up the entire screen! It would seem that Derechos can combine wind gusts and are capable of producing small tornados. Kind of like a Tasmanian devil meets the hulk kind of thing.
Regardless of whether we call it a tornado, derecho, or just plain damaging winds- it is storm season people- time to get out your flashlights and portable cell phone chargers, top off your generators, and make sure you have that air mattress in the basement for those stormy nights.