Tornado Warnings - or Not

Having grown up in the Texas Panhandle, I got my tornado education pretty much first hand. My dad took me out on the front porch many times to watch the storm clouds develop and see tornados appear and take out barns and other things. Now, I knew that standing on the front porch to watch this was fairly okay, because the storms most regularly travel to the north-east, and so it would have already passed over us. I would not go to the back porch to watch a tornado since that would mean it would be heading right towards us. I have a vague little girl memory of looking out the back window watching one coming toward us. And I saw one form over my head one time. I spent several after school stormy afternoons watching the news from the comfort of our basement just in case. I have seen the aftermath of destruction and have seen the bizarre things that the high winds can do. All of this to say I do not take tornado warnings lightly.

But.

Our local warning system has me a little concerned. The warning sirens went off last night while we were flipping channels between Leno and Letterman on the bedroom TV. The weather service telling us there was a possible tornado near Allen, TX, so the tornado warning was issued for our entire county, but we could see on the radar that the storm and the impending "hook" formation of the storm was to the south-east of us, which in tornado storm terminology means - not a big concern for us. Had it been south-west, yup, head for cover, but this one had already passed beyond our neck of the woods. This was the 2nd time this year our sirens have gone off AFTER the storm has passed over us. Makes me a little concerned.

So, as I read blogs this morning from friends who were grabbing their kiddos from bed and heading for cover, I have to think, some of them needed to do that and some just woke their kids up for a storm that had already passed over. Scott and I walked outside to see what was up.

Alrighty, then, who do we need to write a strongly written letter or blog to????