Who cares, both are scary situations!
If you are in a watch situation it means that there are severe weather conditions, such as exceptionally strong winds, rains, lightning and thunder, or even hail. Winds that are strong enough to start a tornado, which is incredibly strong. Watch warnings are issued by the National Weather Services (http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/the-difference-between-tornado/61817).
The really scary situation, however, is the “Warning”. A Warning is a tornado event that is happening NOW! It is accompanied by tornado alarms that sound like train whistles and large buzzing warnings that come over your television set. These override any currently active programming and are followed by, “this is a tornado warning, take cover now!” A warning happens when a tornado is happening in your area.
Last Thursday, when the tornado blew through Perrysburg (incidentally where I live) it wasn’t the train whistle-like sirens that originally woke me around midnight, but rather a text message from my dear friend Ms. Murray that said, “take cover, there is a tornado Warning.” The lightening had woken her and caused her to turn on the television where she heard the warning alert. Being a prudent woman, by the time she texted me, she was already safely ensconced in the inner-most room of her suite (a few apartments over and two floors down from mine), which just so happened to be the bathroom (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/13/1215839/-PARTICULARLY-DANGEROUS-SITUATION-Powerful-Derecho-Tearing-into-Ohio-LIVEBLOG#).
Once awakened however, I quickly got out of bed and went to look out of the window—apparently that is something you shouldn’t do during a tornado. I could hear the alarms going off, but I still hadn’t clued in to the fact that they were tornado alarms. The sky was lit up like daylight, and rains were a torrent, Of course, being ignorant of the protocols, I watched the windstorm as it wrapped itself around the apartment complex. The winds were so strong it looked like they could rip the trees right out of the ground.
The internet was still working so I Googled tornado alerts and discovered there was a “watch” and a “warning,” which I have already explained above. So, I texted Ms. Murray back and asked, “is it a watch or a warning,” to which she replied (still ensconced in her bathroom), “warning.” At that point I will admit that I was becoming somewhat concerned, because a warning means your are either in a tornado or directly in its path. I went into the bathroom, my innermost room, and sat on the toilet for about five minutes. Then it occurred to me that my apartment happens to be on the third floor of a not that well-built building. If a tornado was actually coming, being in the bathroom probably wasn’t going to offer me that much protection. So, I went back out to the bedroom and resolved to watch it through the bedroom windows.
It is probably obvious to anyone reading this blog, that I did indeed survive the tornado. It was a little bit scary, but I am no worse for wear. The next morning on my bike ride to work, I did see a lot of stuff scattered and strewn across roads and in gulley’s and had to get off my bike and lift it over deadfall a couple of times. However, all of the ado aside, what really surprised me was that there wasn’t just one tornado that night, but five tornadoes. Thankfully none were too severe like some of the others that have happened in this area this year (http://chronicle.northcoastnow.com/2013/06/14/at-least-5-tornadoes-touched-down-in-ohio-during-this-weeks-storms/).
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