Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has proclaimed February 3rd through the 7th as “Severe Weather Awareness Week” this year. Usually, this is done the final week of the month when Alabama does the weekend state tax holiday for preparedness supplies. That tax holiday is still scheduled for the last week of this month, but SWAW has been moved a few weeks earlier on the calendar for whatever reason. Tennessee’s SWAW is later this month. Our plan here at Tennessee Valley Weather is to highlight safety, awareness, and preparedness information during BOTH periods. While this is Alabama’s SWAW this week, this same information applies everywhere regardless! For this week, we will be following the topic schedule that NWS Huntsville is using.

Today’s topic is “Preparedness and Safety”. While it is important to be prepared for all hazardous weather types, we are thinking primarily about severe thunderstorm / tornado type hazards and the preparedness and safety steps associated with that. While we will talk about tornado safety rules, shelter options, etc., in today’s discussion, we will stress that information again (and expand on it where necessary) later in the week when we specifically focus on tornadoes. Similarly, we will go more in depth about things such as lightning, severe thunderstorms with hail and damaging winds, and flooding as we go through the week also.
It is critical that every home, every school and university, every business, every place of worship, etc., have a detailed action and safety plan established ahead of time for the event that severe weather becomes an immediate threat. As an individual and/or as a family, your personal plan also needs to include formulating and knowing what you will do, how you will react, and where you will shelter in the event of a severe storm or tornado threat while you are not just at home, but while you are at work, while your kids are at school, while your family is at church, while your family is carrying out extra curricular activities, etc. These action plans must be formulated well in advance while the weather is quiet and then practiced every so often on a regular basis so that it is second nature to the entire family. As a part of your family’s severe weather safety plan, you must know your safe place (where you will go and if it is away from your home, where it is and how long it takes to get there), you must have multiple reliable ways of receiving critical information (including something that will still alert you when the power goes out and something that will wake you out of your sleep at night), and you need an emergency kit in your shelter location that contains the necessary safety and preparedness supplies for your family. All of this needs to be formulated and put into place during quiet weather, well ahead of time, so that when storms are approaching and a warning is issued, all you have to do is just act out your plan.



When formulating the plan for where you will shelter in the event of a tornado or other dangerous storm that can do similar damage (such as severe storms with significant straight-line winds), you need to keep in mind the basic tornado safety rules and how those apply to the structure in which you’re planning to shelter. For those of you with an underground storm shelter or an above-ground FEMA certified safe room, the plan is easy. You just hope in there and hunker down until the threat is over. If your shelter location is a basement, there is a little bit of additional planning you need to do. If it is a fully submerged basement, you want to get as close to the center as possible and try to get under something sturdy like a table or workbench or stairs leading down to the basement. This is to help protect you from falling debris. If your basement is partially exposed, you want to get as far away from the exterior outside-facing wall(s) as possible and try to get under something sturdy like the things mentioned above. Crawl spaces under houses are no-no. You may think they are safe because they are lower than the first floor of the house. However, there have been many instances of the home shifting on its foundational attachments and collapsing down into the crawl space below. If you’re under there and that happens, you are in danger. In fact, there was a young lady killed in Tuscaloosa in April 2014 when just an EF1 tornado caused part of the house to collapse in on her where she was sheltering in the crawl space under her home.
Whether you are at home, at school, at work, at church, at a store, at the gym, etc., if you are sheltering above ground in a site-built structure, the basic idea is to think low, think small, and think as far away from the outside of the building as possible while avoiding large free-span roofs and ceilings. You also want to avoid windows and doors leading to the outside as much as you possibly can. In your site-built home, this is often a small interior hallway, bathroom, or closet on the lowest floor that is near the center of the home and away from windows. In schools, this is usually hallways and other safe areas that are pre-designated. In churches and other places of worship, this is usually hallways, bathrooms, and other areas away from the larger roof area of the sanctuary. For businesses, stores, gyms, etc., this is usually bathrooms, hallways, or small offices that are not under the large free-span roof/ceiling of a sales floor, a gymnasium workout area, etc. For restaurants, this may be interior hallways back in the employee area or the walk-in cooler or walk-in freezer.
For those of you in mobile homes, your plan during a tornado or high wind situation is simply to leave (preferably ahead of time with an advance plan instead of scurrying in a panic at the last minute) and head to a pre-designated site-built shelter area. For you, depending on your situation, that may be a friend or relative nearby that has a shelter or is in a site-built home with a safe place, or that could mean heading to a community shelter or somewhere similar. For some of you, that may be a 24-hour gas station, a hotel, a restaurant, etc., that is nearby. The vast majority of workers at these places will let you in if a dangerous storm is coming and you are in trouble and have nowhere else to shelter. By human nature, most people are good and caring and will help you in such a danger. The important thing is if you live in a mobile home, plan out your shelter location, the route to it, and how long it takes to get there all way in advance and then try to pay attention closely to the weather so that, if possible, you can leave for your shelter location before the storm is bearing down on you. Mobile homes are wonderful, affordable housing. I personally lived in one for the first 34 years of my life. However, they are life-threatening during a tornado or high-wind situation. Anchoring might help mitigate the rolling over aspect from high wind, but there is no protection if a tree falls onto the mobile home. And anchoring does little to nothing to mitigate damage from the upward force associated with even a lower-end tornado in the EF0-EF2 range. It does not take a violent, large EF3-EF5 type tornado to kill someone in a mobile home. Your plan is to simply leave and head for a sturdy structure elsewhere.
While not every community offers a public community storm shelter, especially on the Alabama side of the state line and in northeast Mississippi, there are many towns and jurisdictions that do. We are even starting to see a few pop up in the Tennessee portion of our viewing area. Dr. Crag CeeCee has done a wonderful job compiling the locations of these community shelters and putting them onto an interactive map. You can find that information at: https://findyourtornadoshelter.com/
If you’re in a vehicle and you receive alert of a tornado warning being issued, the best thing to do is find a nearby sturdy structure such as described above as quickly and as safely as possible and shelter there. That may mean driving to the next exit and going inside a gas station or restaurant or something similar. If you need to drive from your home to get to your shelter location, try to do that ahead of time before a tornado warning is issued… either when the storms are still an hour or so away or maybe even when the tornado watch is issued. If you have to drive more than five minutes to get to your shelter location, you do NOT need to wait until the tornado warning is issued before you get on the road. You don’t know what traffic may be like, and there could be any number of obstacles that slow you down on the way to your shelter location.
If you find yourself driving and a tornado is bearing immediately down on you, there are a couple of options that are not really extremely safe but are better than nothing. The long-standing advice is to get out of your vehicle and seek shelter in a ditch or other low-lying area, crouching down as low as possible, and covering your head and neck with your hands to try to protect yourself in those areas from flying debris. However, the tornado’s wind won’t magically skim 100% over you in a ditch, and debris could still be flying through the air that low to the ground, or your vehicle could roll or get tossed into the ditch. There is also the concern of potential flooding. Another suggestion from the Red Cross is to remain in your car, keep your seat belt on, but try your best to crouch down or otherwise lower yourself as much below the window line as you can and do your best to cover your head and neck from flying debris and broken glass. However, there are still the obvious concerns of the vehicle being tossed or rolled. And in stronger tornadoes with higher wind velocities, there is an increasingly higher risk of debris penetrating the vehicle itself, even through the door and other solid metal areas, or in the most violent of tornadoes, the vehicle being directly damaged to a point that is very hard to survive. Some violent high-end type tornadoes can completely crumple vehicles into a small ball or metal or strip their components completely clean of the frame! The absolute best way to avoid any of that described above is to plan ahead, pay attention to the weather on severe weather threat days, and head to your location of shelter ahead of time with time to spare… so that you don’t find yourself on the road with a tornado bearing down on you at the last minute!


In your shelter location, especially if you are sheltering at home, you need an emergency kit of basic preparedness items that will offer you protection during and after the storm, that will allow you methods of receiving emergency information if the power goes out and make communication with the outside, and enough food, water, pet supplies, baby supplies, medications, etc., to sustain you for up to 72 hours. You also need to make sure important documentation is stored in a secure location and that you take pictures of belongings and valuables regularly every so often for insurance purposes. Also make sure that have established out-of-the-area emergency contacts and your family knows them… and have an emergency contact plan with them so that family and friends can communicate back and forth with you as needed. Within your emergency kit should be an air horn so you can squeeze it and make a loud noise to help first responders hear you if you are somehow trapped in your shelter or under tornado debris. Everyone also needs closed-toe, hard-sole type shoes in case you have to walk across a tornado debris field in order to get to assistance or a place of safety after the storm.

One of the most critical pieces of safety equipment your family needs is a HELMET for EVERYONE. Not just the kids, EVERYONE in the family. EVERY life is precious. While the most protective helmet would be one of those safety-rated motorcycle helmets that have neck protection and a full face guard, even something as simple as a $5-10 bike helmet from Walmart will help mitigate the chances of death or serious injury in a tornado situation. It won’t 100% guarantee survival, but it will significantly increase your odds. Most folks that are killed or seriously injured during tornado situations are hurt because of flying debris in the tornado’s wind field causing blunt-force trauma to the head and neck regions of their persons. Protecting yourself with something sturdy like a bike helmet, motorcycle helmet, football helmet, construction hard hat, or even a metal cooking pot as a last resort helps mitigate the risk of those type of injuries to that portion of your body. You can read more here in a 2012 study from UAB after the April 27, 2011 tornado outbreak in Alabama and adjacent areas: https://www.uab.edu/news/research/item/1960-uab-researchers-say-add-a-helmet-to-your-tornado-preparation-kit



Part of your safety plan is also having multiple reliable methods of receiving warnings and other weather alerts, and that includes something that will wake you out of your sleep and something that will still alert you if commercial power goes out. The two most common modern baselines are a NOAA Weather Radio and a reliable smartphone app that is specifically designed to send push notifications for warnings based on your phone’s GPS location.
The NOAA Weather Radio is a battery-powered radio that works on the NOAA NWS transmission network instead of AM/FM transmissions and broadcasts a 24/7/365 signal of weather information and will tone alert a loud alarm for watches and warnings. Modern versions of this radio allow you to program specific counties or a single county of your choosing, and some of them even allow you to specify the type of watches and warnings you want to monitor. These also have attachments such as strobe lights and pillow vibration devices for individuals with disabilities and other such concerns. The one main drawback to a NOAA Weather Radio is that the technology still works on a full county by county basis instead of the polygon storm-based warnings that have been used since 2007. This means that a tornado warning may be issued for a portion of your county, but you’re actually on the other end of the county and NOT in danger, but your radio would still alert you.
The beauty of these smart devices we hold in our hands every day is that they can pinpoint your location if you allow them, so that more sophisticated weather apps can use that geolocation to send specific alerts to you based on whether you are in the storm-based polygon of a warning instead of working on a full county-by-county basis. This means that if a tornado warning is issued for only part of your county, but you’re in the part of the county that’s not included, you’re NOT in danger, and you won’t be alerted. Some people who don’t understand how the polygons work (even though every meteorologist has repeatedly explained it during every severe weather threat since the polygons started in 2007) are sometimes not fond of that, but that comes from a lack of understanding. If you are not in an area that’s in danger, you don’t NEED to be alerted. Point blank, PERIOD. Otherwise, getting warnings over and over for stuff that doesn’t pertain to you will cause you to not pay attention over time, and that could one day put your life in danger! Our FREE Tennessee Valley Weather App is one of these smart device apps that can do specific push notifications based on your geolocation if you allow it (or you can set fixed specific locations to monitor). It also gives you interactive radar so you can track the storms with us, you get current conditions for the reporting station closest to your location, the latest hourly and extended forecast (built by our team if you’re in the viewing area, or from the NWS if you’re traveling… it’s NOT computer model automated crap like the stock weather app that comes on your phone), and it has a live streaming link to our 24/7 all local digital channel where you can watch our live storm coverage from your shelter. You can also watch our 24/7 streaming channel on smart TV apps for Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, or just simply on YouTube if you have some other type of smart TV device. We promise to ALWAYS be there with LIVE NON-STOP coverage anytime one of the counties in our 14-county viewing area is placed in a Tornado Warning. We will be there LIVE NON-STOP until the warning has expired, been discontinued, or the danger is otherwise over!
Sirens DO serve a purpose, but they are meant to warn you OUTDOORS that you need to seek additional information. Never use a siren as your sole warning method! Any technology can fail, to begin with. Add to the fact that sirens can be knocked out from an approaching tornado before the tornado even arrives in town. In addition, even if you are relatively close to a siren, it is highly unlikely it will wake you out of your sleep in the middle of the night with a loud raging storm ongoing outside. And we all know just how many nighttime tornadoes and severe storms we get around here! Yes, OUTDOOR warning sirens DO serve a purpose, but NEVER make them your only way of listening out for a warning!