We had those warnings relatively frequently when I lived in Texas. In school they had taught us to hide in the basement in case of a tornado, but no one actually had basements. So I never saw a tornado, but I did see spinning clouds high in the sky once.
At least in recent times, the news people acknowledge that ain’t nobody has a basement, so we are now officially supposed to do what I was planning on doing all along: if we hear the tornado ripping through our neighbors’ houses, we’re supposed to do the bodyguard style “NOOOOOO” leap, into the bathtub, while holding a bunch of pillows and shit to cover ourselves, so the roof beams don’t scrape us quite so much, while we’re being crushed to death.
EDIT: also, if I find myself 1,900 feet in the air, but I still have a pillow, I’ll stretch out and make like I’m still asleep. Maybe someone will be filming it in 8k resolution and it’ll be a hilarious fucking clip on the internet, forever.
Someone told me a story one time about using this technique. She was with her grandkids and a tornado was right there and closing fast. She got in the bathtub with her grandkids and all hell broke loose. When she eventually lifted the mattress, the house was gone.
Oh yeah, it totally CAN work. It’s definitely better than just standing in the middle of a random room of the house and very seriously asking Jesus if he can intervene on your behalf, with this already-in-progress wind event.
It’s just that, ya know, nobody ever knows how many times people were in their bathtubs, following that procedure, but they were in one of the houses where it’s like “WELP, THE WHOLE STRUCTURE WAS GONE, ALL THE WAY TO A CLEAN SLAB OF CONCRETE.”
Maybe those people were totally inside their bathtub, and they rode that motherfucker all the way to Oz.
And, once again, just for clarification: I still plan on doing that shit, if I have to. Last spring, we had a big thunderstorm pass super-duper close to my actual subdivision, and I got to the point where I was sitting on the toilet, watching the weather map on my phone, totally ready to move into the tub.
That must have been wild. And yeah, I’m sure being in a bathtub helps someone feel a little better, but at the end of the day it would e terrifying for good reason.
Yeah, it’s more than a little stressful, when the crazy shit gets close to you. I’ve had maybe ten or twelve of those events in my time, where the “if there’s a tornado, it will be SOMEWHERE IN HERE” red zone on the map is whipping right across my actual address, and the civil defense sirens start blasting outside the window.
If other natural disasters were like that, it would be even more fucking crazy, though. For example, if earthquake warnings worked the way tornado warnings work, absolutely NOBODY could handle that shit. Like, if there was a quake warning map with the potential earthquake zones weirdly sliding around on the local news, until the fault finally goes off somewhere.
Exactly. I mean, I’m sure that’s creepy, also. Like, especially if you wake up, check your phone, and realize you’ve slept through a minor one. Like “huh, I guess I technically could have woken up right as I was being squished into paste by my neighbor’s chimney.”
We had those warnings relatively frequently when I lived in Texas. In school they had taught us to hide in the basement in case of a tornado, but no one actually had basements. So I never saw a tornado, but I did see spinning clouds high in the sky once.
At least in recent times, the news people acknowledge that ain’t nobody has a basement, so we are now officially supposed to do what I was planning on doing all along: if we hear the tornado ripping through our neighbors’ houses, we’re supposed to do the bodyguard style “NOOOOOO” leap, into the bathtub, while holding a bunch of pillows and shit to cover ourselves, so the roof beams don’t scrape us quite so much, while we’re being crushed to death.
EDIT: also, if I find myself 1,900 feet in the air, but I still have a pillow, I’ll stretch out and make like I’m still asleep. Maybe someone will be filming it in 8k resolution and it’ll be a hilarious fucking clip on the internet, forever.
Someone told me a story one time about using this technique. She was with her grandkids and a tornado was right there and closing fast. She got in the bathtub with her grandkids and all hell broke loose. When she eventually lifted the mattress, the house was gone.
Oh yeah, it totally CAN work. It’s definitely better than just standing in the middle of a random room of the house and very seriously asking Jesus if he can intervene on your behalf, with this already-in-progress wind event.
It’s just that, ya know, nobody ever knows how many times people were in their bathtubs, following that procedure, but they were in one of the houses where it’s like “WELP, THE WHOLE STRUCTURE WAS GONE, ALL THE WAY TO A CLEAN SLAB OF CONCRETE.”
Maybe those people were totally inside their bathtub, and they rode that motherfucker all the way to Oz.
And, once again, just for clarification: I still plan on doing that shit, if I have to. Last spring, we had a big thunderstorm pass super-duper close to my actual subdivision, and I got to the point where I was sitting on the toilet, watching the weather map on my phone, totally ready to move into the tub.
That must have been wild. And yeah, I’m sure being in a bathtub helps someone feel a little better, but at the end of the day it would e terrifying for good reason.
Yeah, it’s more than a little stressful, when the crazy shit gets close to you. I’ve had maybe ten or twelve of those events in my time, where the “if there’s a tornado, it will be SOMEWHERE IN HERE” red zone on the map is whipping right across my actual address, and the civil defense sirens start blasting outside the window.
If other natural disasters were like that, it would be even more fucking crazy, though. For example, if earthquake warnings worked the way tornado warnings work, absolutely NOBODY could handle that shit. Like, if there was a quake warning map with the potential earthquake zones weirdly sliding around on the local news, until the fault finally goes off somewhere.
That’s wild, I honestly can’t imagine. They do have earthquake warnings, but I think they’re just phone alerts just before the quake actually hits.
Exactly. I mean, I’m sure that’s creepy, also. Like, especially if you wake up, check your phone, and realize you’ve slept through a minor one. Like “huh, I guess I technically could have woken up right as I was being squished into paste by my neighbor’s chimney.”