I slept through three tornado sirens last night. It was pretty wild. The first one, I thought it was a test. (We have tests every month on the 1st.) But it wasn't until a few minutes in that I realized it was for real.
Then apparently I just... went to sleep? That wasn't the smartest decision I've ever made. It went off a couple more times.
One strange thing was the realization that I had no idea where to turn for information. The fall of TV means that in a situation like that, there isn't any "tune to your local TV station" type broadcast. All you get is a tornado siren.
I imagine if nuclear armageddon ever happens, it'll be similar. Though at least with that, there'll be some information channel to turn to.
You mean in your daily in-take of media? Local TV stations are required to broadcast weather. It's actually part of their licensing. So if you're not in the habit of turning on the local station because of crappy programming (like me), then you should at least be willing to find a local station during weather. Even if regular programming is on, they will break in when requested by the NWS. Local radio will as well, but I can't remember the last time I heard Clearcom or whatever the othe station owner is do this. I just don't listen to radio.
Also, most local stations will also be running live webcasts to FB/YT/etc. They do this in order to avoid interrupting programming until it is urgent enough to do so.
I'm in North Texas, and during severe weather season, I have a web browser permantely tuned to the radar. If it's getting bad, I'll find a local station.
> I imagine if nuclear armageddon ever happens, it'll be similar
One day, fully alert and sober at something like 5 PM with no excuses, during a thunderstorm, I heard tornado sirens go off. I thought to myself, "sheesh they are only supposed to run tests at noon once a month, and not during sto- oh"
Get a weather radio if you don't have one. For about 20-40 bucks, you can get one with rechargeable batteries and a charging cradle. Follow the instructions to set it for your regional station. It will wake up and sound the alert for any warnings in your area. Plus you can actively listen to it for the latest storm news.
As long as you still have power & internet, your local tv station will usually stream during weather emergencies. I've done this on more than one stormy day. Sat comfortably on the couch watching one stream on the iPad while another played on the television. Wondering if this was going to be the day when it finally hit.
On your phone, get RadarScope. It's highly worth the 5 or 10 dollars. It's a detailed radar app. Has many different radar products. Can see the usual storm views with warnings outlined. the relative velocity to see the spin. correlation coefficient to determine if there's a debris ball. Etc. Shows the estimated tracking path for storm cells. For the many storms in my area, this has been invaluable.
Probably the most important resource is NOAA's local prediction pages and the Storm Prediction Center (SPC). During storm seasons, the SPC's Convective Outlook is worth checking at least once a day to see if anything's likely in the near future. Plus the mesoscale discussions are useful on the storm day to see how the forecasters think the events will play out.
For local reporting by locals, Twitter is surprisingly useful. Look for a hashtag that contains the two letter abbreviation for your state plus the letters "wx". I follow #kswx for Kansas storms.
TV is still a thing--get a small antenna to pick up your local stations. Growing up in tornado alley we always had a local TV news station on during severe weather. They cut out of regular broadcasting and usually have a live play by play with the weatherman showing radar and locations of known funnel clouds, etc. If you're going to live there make a plan for future severe weather like this--it's nothing you want to sleep through.
Twitter is a great source of information; when there's a tornado warning I keep a close eye on #gawx (substitute first 2 letters for your own state). That ends up producing a feed of info from meteorologists and amateur spotters with a mix of official reports, amateur info, photos, radar pics, etc. Often any photo or video will have comments from TV stations asking for permission to rebroadcast.
I lived in Midwest for over 20 years. There were times when I'd be sipping coffee while sitting outside a coffee shop underneath giant funnel clouds above. Tornado alerts are common but touchdowns are so rare that you just kind of not pay attention anymore. With that said, it seems like when they do occur they are increasingly more damaging and closer to densely populated areas. Two years ago there was one just a few miles outside of Kansas City downtown. I remember hearing the next days in the news that it was nothing short of a miracle that it didn't move toward downtown and instead went off into the rural parts of the city.
Do you think you would have reacted differently during tornado season? (I'm not sure when that is, but I am pretty sure December isn't in it, or at least was not before the storms of 2011.)
I think it is also worth pointing out that merely having sirens, and the information network capable (for the most part) of setting them off when and only when there is a significant risk, is well within about 90% of being as good as one should reasonably expect: if that is the most information you can get in the moment, how, rationally, should you respond, if not by seeking cover?
On the other hand, it is quickly counter-productive to set off the sirens for every mildly elevated risk, as it conditions everyone to be skeptical. Unfortunately, current social dynamics, which blame and punish anyone who makes a decision to not raise the alarm prior to something bad subsequently happening, is guaranteed to bring about this skepticism.
>The fall of TV means that in a situation like that, there isn't any "tune to your local TV station" type broadcast. All you get is a tornado siren.
You didn't get a phone alert about it happening? I thought those were mandatory for these kinds of events, I think they even overrule some of the DND rules on your phone.
I had something similar happen this summer, and I can't remember if I woke up from the alert and went back to sleep or woke up to a missed alert, but I definitely got more information on my phone without ever asking for it.
The most straightforward thing you can do is pick up a cheap TV antenna and a basic battery powered radio.
Over the air TV is actually really good now. The switch to digital brought full HD over the air. And local FM/AM radio will broadcast info in an emergency. Can get a weather radio too if you want to.
As far as I know we don't have tornado sirens here (Western Washington across Puget Sound from Seattle), but we got a tornado warning here a month ago and officials issued some kind of alert by smart phone.
It was amazingly loud on my iPhone. I don't think I've ever been so tired that I would have been able to sleep through it if it had happened when I was asleep.
Tornadoes are rare here--before that one the last had been in 2018, and the last before that was 1991, and I don't think there are any on record before that in this county.
The warning for my area was on the list on the front page, had a link to show the full alert from the National Weather Service, and had a link to show a map of the boundary of the area covered by the warning.
I had no plan for what to do. There is a place in my house where I can stand and have walls or closed doors between me and all windows to provide some shelter from flying debris, so that was one idea. The other idea was to hop in my car and drive to a place nearby that is up on top of a hill and has roads in perpendicular directions and good visibility. From there the hope would be to be able to see if it was coming my way, and then flee by whichever road is most perpendicular to the direction it was moving.
EAS is still broadcast over the air on the VHF spectrum and includes NOAA weather updates which your taxes pay for. Buy a weather radio, because the TV alerts are literally just EAS receivers interrupting programming.
EAS transmission sites are built to withstand tornadoes and even casual offensive military strikes. TV stations aren't.
You may also consider getting into amateur radio too.
You can also get a hand-crank emergency radio - does AM, FM and some other weird (NWS) bands. Once you know the emergency stations just write them on the radio with Sharpie.
I know this doesn't directly help you in STL, but Tennessee has a pretty incredible volunteer crew who update us on Twitter and also go live on YouTube when things get bad. There may be something similar in your area. We find them to be invaluable for keeping us up to date, more effectively than TV news ever did.
> One strange thing was the realization that I had no idea where to turn for information. The fall of TV means that in a situation like that, there isn't any "tune to your local TV station" type broadcast
Get a DTV antenna for your TV and you'll get your free local broadcasts.
> I imagine if nuclear armageddon ever happens, it'll be similar
In that case, I think any of us would be lucky to get a warning at all.
My wife and I were evaluating last night what to do. We saw the warnings, but they happen so often we just went back to bed after looking outside. Woke up to part of our siding was ripped off from the storms (not uncommon). We kind of figured it would happen, but the storms were hours long and 99.9% of the time nothing happens.
This is all so dumb that it feels like it must be a troll. You don’t need a TV to watch your local TV news. They have this newfangled thing called a website and they are also on twitter. Or try your local newspaper’s website, which will obviously cover live weather events. Sigh.
Buy WX “weather alert” radio Midland makes a bunch of models some that even run off batteries. Basically it is several radio stations run By NOAA to send out local wether and warnings. They are like 20 bucks and most also do AM FM as well.
One of the many reasons I love the ABC (our national broadcaster in Australia) is that everybody knows that they will have the info you need in an emergency - on TV, radio, online, and social media, round the clock.
When I was studying in the states fire alarm tests (or someone cooking triggering them) were so frequent that I would have never expected to be informed of a real fire this way.
> It was unclear how many workers were still missing, as Amazon did not have an exact count of people working in the sorting and delivery center at the time the tornadoes hit, Whiteford said.
I find this hard to accept. They keep track of workers' productivity by the second, but they don't know how many were working there at that time??
> They keep track of workers' productivity by the second, but they don't know how many were working there at that time??
I'd say there's a good chance their on-site computer systems that keep track of employees and their productivity happen to also be out of commission ATM.
I don’t understand a few things, as they aren’t covered in the article, that I saw.
Were there no warnings for the severe weather storm that would have prevented people coming in to work or allowed them to leave work early? When I was working in the office, we were usually forced (literally security swept the building) to leave when severe winter weather was coming in a few times.
Why doesn’t Amazon, in the middle of Tornado Alley, have tornado shelters for its employees? Employees should not be having to run around finding places to hide. There should be designated shelters.
The photos of the aftermath are shocking. More than half of the building is completely demolished. Exterior walls flattened. Vans are draped with 30 foot concrete panels. The roof is everywhere. A ruined skeleton of support columns and trusses towers ominously above the wreckage.
I can only imagine the terror of witnessing this devastation unfold around your person.
Aside - check out the difference in the photos from last night to today. The emergency response has cleared out an incredible amount of rubble.
I find it interesting that no one seems to be talking about the fact that we're having deadly tornadoes in December. This is not normal, especially if this was a multiple tornado event, but even one really big one would be way out of the ordinary. Maybe it's my northern Illinois upbringing, but tornadoes this time of year seems way unlikely.
No snarky comments from me. Just RIP and I hope their families are compensated. No compensation will ever bring back those people or extinguish their families anguish but something is better than nothing.
"Six Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) workers were confirmed dead on Saturday after a series of tornadoes roared through a warehouse near St Louis, ripping off its roof and causing 11-inch thick concrete walls longer than football fields to collapse on themselves."
Horrific.
A wall that size cannot possibly survive a big wind.
When there are Tornado Warnings in the area, are there any policies at big warehouses like this one (not just Amazon's others too) to take shelter? Is there enough time to get to a reinforced area? How long would staff have to stay in the reinforced area?
Low probability, high consequence events are hard to plan for.
Sad for all those who have died or are suffering in the wake of the storms.
What’s crazy is how at least 70 people have died in other states. A bunch of tornadoes happened at around the same time. It caught everybody by surprise.
We stayed in the basement after the sirens started, and followed it on the weather radar. We got notifications on the phone, and kids were dismissed from evening activities early. Pretty rare to get this type of weather this time of year.
[+] [-] sillysaurusx|4 years ago|reply
Then apparently I just... went to sleep? That wasn't the smartest decision I've ever made. It went off a couple more times.
One strange thing was the realization that I had no idea where to turn for information. The fall of TV means that in a situation like that, there isn't any "tune to your local TV station" type broadcast. All you get is a tornado siren.
I imagine if nuclear armageddon ever happens, it'll be similar. Though at least with that, there'll be some information channel to turn to.
[+] [-] dylan604|4 years ago|reply
You mean in your daily in-take of media? Local TV stations are required to broadcast weather. It's actually part of their licensing. So if you're not in the habit of turning on the local station because of crappy programming (like me), then you should at least be willing to find a local station during weather. Even if regular programming is on, they will break in when requested by the NWS. Local radio will as well, but I can't remember the last time I heard Clearcom or whatever the othe station owner is do this. I just don't listen to radio.
Also, most local stations will also be running live webcasts to FB/YT/etc. They do this in order to avoid interrupting programming until it is urgent enough to do so.
I'm in North Texas, and during severe weather season, I have a web browser permantely tuned to the radar. If it's getting bad, I'll find a local station.
> I imagine if nuclear armageddon ever happens, it'll be similar
If you're in Hawaii, you'll get a text.
[+] [-] rossnordby|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jazzyjackson|4 years ago|reply
https://www.amazon.com/Raynic-Emergency-Portable-Flashlight-...
[+] [-] tigerInATurvy|4 years ago|reply
As long as you still have power & internet, your local tv station will usually stream during weather emergencies. I've done this on more than one stormy day. Sat comfortably on the couch watching one stream on the iPad while another played on the television. Wondering if this was going to be the day when it finally hit.
On your phone, get RadarScope. It's highly worth the 5 or 10 dollars. It's a detailed radar app. Has many different radar products. Can see the usual storm views with warnings outlined. the relative velocity to see the spin. correlation coefficient to determine if there's a debris ball. Etc. Shows the estimated tracking path for storm cells. For the many storms in my area, this has been invaluable.
Probably the most important resource is NOAA's local prediction pages and the Storm Prediction Center (SPC). During storm seasons, the SPC's Convective Outlook is worth checking at least once a day to see if anything's likely in the near future. Plus the mesoscale discussions are useful on the storm day to see how the forecasters think the events will play out.
For local reporting by locals, Twitter is surprisingly useful. Look for a hashtag that contains the two letter abbreviation for your state plus the letters "wx". I follow #kswx for Kansas storms.
[+] [-] qbasic_forever|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] athenot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sakopov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mannykannot|4 years ago|reply
I think it is also worth pointing out that merely having sirens, and the information network capable (for the most part) of setting them off when and only when there is a significant risk, is well within about 90% of being as good as one should reasonably expect: if that is the most information you can get in the moment, how, rationally, should you respond, if not by seeking cover?
On the other hand, it is quickly counter-productive to set off the sirens for every mildly elevated risk, as it conditions everyone to be skeptical. Unfortunately, current social dynamics, which blame and punish anyone who makes a decision to not raise the alarm prior to something bad subsequently happening, is guaranteed to bring about this skepticism.
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|4 years ago|reply
You didn't get a phone alert about it happening? I thought those were mandatory for these kinds of events, I think they even overrule some of the DND rules on your phone.
I had something similar happen this summer, and I can't remember if I woke up from the alert and went back to sleep or woke up to a missed alert, but I definitely got more information on my phone without ever asking for it.
[+] [-] emptybottle|4 years ago|reply
Over the air TV is actually really good now. The switch to digital brought full HD over the air. And local FM/AM radio will broadcast info in an emergency. Can get a weather radio too if you want to.
[+] [-] tzs|4 years ago|reply
It was amazingly loud on my iPhone. I don't think I've ever been so tired that I would have been able to sleep through it if it had happened when I was asleep.
Tornadoes are rare here--before that one the last had been in 2018, and the last before that was 1991, and I don't think there are any on record before that in this county.
I Googled for something like "active tornado warnings" and found this site: https://www.tornadohq.com/
The warning for my area was on the list on the front page, had a link to show the full alert from the National Weather Service, and had a link to show a map of the boundary of the area covered by the warning.
I had no plan for what to do. There is a place in my house where I can stand and have walls or closed doors between me and all windows to provide some shelter from flying debris, so that was one idea. The other idea was to hop in my car and drive to a place nearby that is up on top of a hill and has roads in perpendicular directions and good visibility. From there the hope would be to be able to see if it was coming my way, and then flee by whichever road is most perpendicular to the direction it was moving.
[+] [-] nimbius|4 years ago|reply
EAS transmission sites are built to withstand tornadoes and even casual offensive military strikes. TV stations aren't.
You may also consider getting into amateur radio too.
[+] [-] edoceo|4 years ago|reply
Like these https://www.bobvila.com/articles/best-hand-crank-radio/
[+] [-] zippergz|4 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/nashseverewx
Sample of last night's coverage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfdgKfoV538
[+] [-] mjrpes|4 years ago|reply
https://weather.us/radar-us/kentucky/radar-and-lightning/KHP...
Notice it was right in line with a cell at the "extreme/hail" end of the spectrum.
[+] [-] heavyset_go|4 years ago|reply
Get a DTV antenna for your TV and you'll get your free local broadcasts.
> I imagine if nuclear armageddon ever happens, it'll be similar
In that case, I think any of us would be lucky to get a warning at all.
[+] [-] lettergram|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barcadad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kolinko|4 years ago|reply
Also, you can google quickly what siren signals mean. There are specific patterns for various disasters and tests.
And finally - if it’s in the middle of night, for sure it’s something serious.
[+] [-] pmorici|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oatz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thomasfedb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harha|4 years ago|reply
Monthly test alarms are so wrong.
[+] [-] bluefirebrand|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xwdv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jptech|4 years ago|reply
I find this hard to accept. They keep track of workers' productivity by the second, but they don't know how many were working there at that time??
[+] [-] axiolite|4 years ago|reply
I'd say there's a good chance their on-site computer systems that keep track of employees and their productivity happen to also be out of commission ATM.
[+] [-] bmitc|4 years ago|reply
Were there no warnings for the severe weather storm that would have prevented people coming in to work or allowed them to leave work early? When I was working in the office, we were usually forced (literally security swept the building) to leave when severe winter weather was coming in a few times.
Why doesn’t Amazon, in the middle of Tornado Alley, have tornado shelters for its employees? Employees should not be having to run around finding places to hide. There should be designated shelters.
[+] [-] blamazon|4 years ago|reply
I can only imagine the terror of witnessing this devastation unfold around your person.
Aside - check out the difference in the photos from last night to today. The emergency response has cleared out an incredible amount of rubble.
[+] [-] dhosek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kello|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gerdesj|4 years ago|reply
Horrific.
A wall that size cannot possibly survive a big wind.
Cannot.
[+] [-] loonster|4 years ago|reply
EF-3 tornado: 136-165 mph
[+] [-] rectang|4 years ago|reply
Low probability, high consequence events are hard to plan for.
Sad for all those who have died or are suffering in the wake of the storms.
[+] [-] stavros|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crossroadsguy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] adrr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] noah_buddy|4 years ago|reply
How tragic, I feel awful for their families and so close to the holidays. :(
[+] [-] DantesKite|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itsjustme2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wglb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] w0mbat|4 years ago|reply
It should be rephrased to: "6 Amazon workers killed after tornadoes destroy warehouse near St. Louis".
[+] [-] suqiifkfkg|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] throwaway3337|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] markdown|4 years ago|reply
WTF? Do they record attendance on paper?
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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