In the last week or so I've heard the tornado sirens twice, twice watched the Channel Four Storm Tracker point the tornado Parallelograms of Death directly at my house, and even took cover in my basement once.
(The Channel Four weatherman is a big fan of phoning up your friends who are in the tornado's path and telling them to seek shelter. At one a.m. during the Jefferson City tornado he exhorted us to call our friends in JC, wake them up, and tell them to seek shelter. Had I any friends in Jeff City I might have done it, but what if they were already in the basement? I would hope they would stay in the basement muttering, "Yes, Ellen, I know there's a tornado.")
Everyone at work has a tornado story: just tree damage like ours, or a roof gone, or entire rooms gone. Friend 4 once lived in the apartments that were damaged in the Jefferson City tornado.
Tornadoes are getting too close.
(Photo of Channel Four weatherman pointing approximately at my house alerting me I have 14 minutes to live.)
Except for our house being *exactly* the right (small) size for us to keep more-or-less clean right now, I wish we had a basement; then we could hang out in climate-controlled, electricity-is-on, we-even-have-internet-access surroundings during tornado warnings, instead of being in a metal box embedded in our garage floor, with uncomfortable benches and weird LED light. (I bet your basement doesn't collect dead crickets as fast as our tornado shelter does, either.)
That said: yes, too many tornadoes. Sigh.
Posted by: KC | May 28, 2019 at 01:35 PM
KC - I grew up in a slab house, and the one time there was a weather emergency Mom hid in the hall closet. How big is this metal box?
Posted by: TheQueen | May 29, 2019 at 06:47 AM
Metal box is something like 5' tall by 8-10' long (not sure; there's a ladder eating a bunch of it) by 3' wide, ish? And with 8" wide (or so) benches running the full length (so, benches all the way along, ladder/stairs taking out a diagonal slice from the between-bench area from one top edge of the box down to probably 3' from the opposite bottom edge). It's a bit like https://survive-a-storm.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Garage-Cube-8-1024x768.x91042.jpg - except that the stairs don't go all the way to the sides, so you could get behind them if you needed to, and the dimensions are probably a bit different as well. But: nowhere near tall enough to stand up in, although it only requires bending over, not crawling; not wide enough to fully stretch long legs out width-wise (but close?); and length uncertain because of the ladder taking up most of the space.
Our bathroom doesn't have windows, so I suspect that the bathtub was the location of choice for threatening weather before the previous homeowners chucked a Tornado Box in the garage. Either that or the coat closet, which has no exterior walls (but is petite). I've been tempted to say "well, the bathroom was good enough for the first 60 years of this house's existence" rather than packing into the awkward metal box out in the garage - but on the other hand, this house was never hit by a tornado. So "good enough" is perhaps a relative term...
Posted by: KC | May 29, 2019 at 11:36 AM
KC - that sounds miserable!
Posted by: TheQueen | May 30, 2019 at 09:41 PM
A finished basement would be a lot nicer. A *lot* nicer. :-) Esp. if it had a sofa or something in it. And a lower population of crickets and spiders.
But temporarily lodging in Metal Box Underground is probably worth it (given the lack of basement) for the whole "if a tornado *did* hit the house, we'd probably be fine" thing. And we do take books down and have adequate light to read them by, and it's possible to stretch out your legs diagonally or lengthwise, and we don't have any kids to go stir-crazy. It could be a lot worse. :-)
Posted by: KC | May 31, 2019 at 11:39 AM
KC - the reporting in our area is so precise that I've never been down in the basement for more than fifteen minutes. I wouldn't bring a book. Don't they give you an all clear? I hate to think of you reading a book in a box underground.
Posted by: theQueen | June 01, 2019 at 02:28 PM
The reporting in our area is less precise; we've had it be well over half an hour before the all-clear, although I'm not 100% sure how long the longest siren run has been. They do sound an all-clear, but it's a bit obnoxious because it's verbal through the siren loudspeakers and therefore is about as intelligible as airport speaker noise (but they repeat it, so *usually* we can eventually tell the difference between "remain in place" sorts of verbal messages and "all clear").
I do really like books and do not have problems with claustrophobia, so it's not all that bad. Also, we haven't had too many tornado warnings; less than one per year so far since moving to Tornado Country! So it's doable/fine-ish. I'd just prefer a basement with a sofa and wireless and no dead crickets and fewer spiders. :-)
Posted by: KC | June 01, 2019 at 06:22 PM
KC - Ours is very precise. The last two we’ve waited till it was within three miles and then we go to the basement.
Also, it seems the spiders could kill the crickets. What kills crickets? Cats? Could you keep a cat in the garage?
Posted by: TheQueen | June 03, 2019 at 08:16 PM
I expect that some of the crickets are indeed killed by spiders, but spiders don't eat the whole thing - they sloppily leave most of the exoskeleton in a prickly dessicated cricket sort of arrangement. I think I would probably be fine with brushing against dead crickets if 1. there were no live spiders that those legs-that-just-touched-me might belong to, or 2. if my body did not react hilariously to most spider bites (I mean, it's only a rash and mild generalized allergy/flu-y symptoms, but the Giant Rash is weird and nubbly and bizarre), and/or 3. we didn't have any legitimately-poisonous-get-to-the-ER spiders - having those spiders be local means that if one gets a Giant Rash after presumed spider contact, one can't as comfortably just ignore it until it goes away. (unless one got a positive spider ID on the individual presumed responsible, in which case, yes, Mr. Shower Spider was a small greeny-yellowy spider, none of which are "ER OR DIE" spiders so yep, wait out the rash and call it a day; but ID-ing spiders in a bug-encrusted tornado shelter: not likely.)
Basically, the dead cricket legs fake me out, when taken in combination with the poisonous spider concern. (also dead cricket legs are gross and itchy-making. But the big problem is that they fake me out and/or disguise Bad Spiders and no thank you I do not *want* to go in to the ER with we-don't-know-what-bit-me chaos and no thank you I do not *want* to be nervous about the possibility thereof.)
This is why the tornado shelter gets shop-vacced of dead crickets at intervals; sometimes those intervals hit close enough to the tornado possibilities that there isn't a new collection of spiders and dead crickets by then, other times, not so much... Really, I should probably just get adult-sized thin cotton footie pyjamas to put on before going into the tornado shelter, and then I'd be fine because there'd be no ankles/waist for cricket/spider enjoyment... but I don't want to try looking for that online or on Amazon, because eugh those search results can't be pretty...
Posted by: KC | June 04, 2019 at 11:09 AM
KC - Raccoons love both spiders AND crickets. Just a thought.
Posted by: TheQueen | June 06, 2019 at 10:22 AM
I think the cure would be worse than the disease, if the raccoon remained in the tornado shelter during warnings, but thanks for the Brilliant Idea. ;-)
Posted by: KC | June 06, 2019 at 12:49 PM