Tornadoes in December?
The emergency weather alert screamed from my smartphone last Friday night.
“TORNADO WARNING in this area until 10:30 p.m. Take shelter now in a basement or an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building.”
I didn’t take shelter in my basement or a safe room anywhere in my home. In fact, I’ve never done this in my life. Instead, I opened up the bedroom curtains, cranked open both windows and stared in awe at the violent storm blowing through my neighborhood.
I’ve witnessed few things in my life as powerful as an incoming weather front. It captivates me as a curious observer of nature. It may injure me someday. Outside my home, trees bent sharply to the side. The wind growled. Rain pounded down sideways.
I clicked on a weather radar map to see how bad it looked from above. I didn’t need Tom Skilling or Brant Miller to share their professional expertise or personal warnings. The radar looked bad. Scary bad. A 10 p.m. screenshot showed the entire Chicago metro area covered in dark green, angry yellow or dangerous orange. And it was all heading my way at frightening speed.
My 21st century routine kicked into gear: I began charging my iPhone, turned off my desktop computer, and checked social media sites for weather updates or escapist memes. After checking on my mom and sister, who live nearby, I went straight to my basement. Not for safe shelter but to make sure my sump pump was working. My biggest concern about losing power in my home is that our sump pump would need to use its emergency battery backup system. I helped install it. I don’t trust it.
While watching it belch out a constant flow of rainwater, I looked around for a safe spot if a tornado hit my neighborhood. I don’t recall ever having this concern in December, with Christmas next week, but this year is different. I blame it on effects from climate change, but that’s another topic for another column.
Similar to too many people I know, possibly you as well, I am in no way prepared at my home for a tornado or high wind event. Unless repeatedly saying “Hmm … maybe we should go to the basement” is a plan. Otherwise, I have nothing in place to protect my family from such a threat.
Between watching last Friday’s storm swirl around my home and periodically peeking at my basement sump pump, I made a promise to look into a tornado preparedness plan. It may sound like an atheist praying to God from a combat foxhole, but this is what existential fear can do to you.
The next morning, my home lost power due to a fallen tree in our area. My neighborhood didn’t have electricity for a few hours. I hustled down to the basement a few times, again not to seek safe shelter but to check the sump pump. Its battery backup system was doing its job. I exhaled and checked my phone for updates.
NIPSCO did an impressive job of sending numerous notification updates via text, email and voicemail until our power was restored. I recalled the olden days when NIPSCO customers had to repeatedly call a hotline that seemed to never reach anyone. Rumors served as the only conduit back then to neighbors’ guesses when power would be restored. These days it’s a more exact science. NIPSCO projected our home’s power to return by 11:45 a.m. and it returned almost an hour earlier.
As I picked up dozens of fallen tree branches that littered my yard, I pulled out my phone and typed in to a search engine three simple words: tornado preparedness plan. An American Red Cross PDF flier popped up. I took a screenshot and began reading news alerts about more than 50 tornadoes ripping through several other states, killing more than 100 people and destroying entire towns. We’ve seen the chilling news coverage. We saw the faces of survivors who lost everything. We looked around our intact home and counted our blessings.
“We got to the church and found ourselves in the basement,” the Rev. Joey Reed, lead pastor for Mayfield First United Methodist Church in Mayfield, Kentucky, told reporters. “And, according to the safety plan, we should have been in a hallway in that basement. If we had stayed in that hallway, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.”
Reed and his wife ended up in a church classroom, which turned out to be their safe spot. Tornadoes can be evil with their randomness to kill and destroy. I’m sure the reverend and his wife thanked God for the intuition that saved their lives.
Mother Nature can be thanked for the random experience of Katie Posten, of New Albany, Indiana, who found an old photo on her car’s windshield Saturday morning. It belonged to a family living 130 miles away in Dawson Springs, Kentucky, victims of one of Friday’s tornadoes. Posten shared the photo, taken in 1942, on social media to find its owner and it worked. It was one of the few uplifting stories in the wake of all the carnage.
This past Wednesday night, as winds gusted up to 50 mph outside my home, I finally checked into a tornado preparedness plan through the American Red Cross. If you haven’t yet done so, I suggest you do, too. (To help survivors, text “tornadoes” to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross.)
I found the safest spot in our basement, not near a window. I stashed flashlights, coverings, and a few other suggested necessities. It’s for a worstcase scenario, but think of all those shell-shocked families that are now searching for blown away remnants of their former lives. I literally can’t imagine that feeling.
Can you?