Archive for December 11th, 2008

Did you hear that they had a tornado touch down in Plano Monday night? I don’t want to scare you. But some people from outside town, of which I used to be one, are not up to speed on the weather safety issues for those of us who live in North Texas.

At first, when they told me we have severe weather here, I was inclined to take it as a Texas tall tale. I wish that were true, but now that we’ve lived here for six years, I can tell you that yes, they were right, we have severe weather here, weather that demands preparedness and knowledge for comfort and even safety.

First of all, when the schools and businesses close because of ice conditions, it is recommended you do not leave the house for anything short of an emergency. Do not be fooled by the fact that we don’t have a “really cold” winter here. It may not be sub-zero, but ice conditions in North Texas are severe. The reason everything is closed is because you can get stranded out there, sliding on a sheet of uphill ice and unable to move, or lose control of the car on the ice and hit something or somebody. Don’t drive if you don’t have to.

That advice also goes for when we have downpour rain conditions. I’m not talking about a little sprinkle; what I mean is if it’s sheeting down and the flow is 4 inches deep in the gutters and spreading halfway across the street. This happens whenever an inch of rain falls in an hour or less. You will look out the window and say “my God, it’s coming down in sheets.” And you thought this only happened in Louisianna.

Try not to go out until the flow subsides, and especially don’t go anywhere if you do not have first hand observation experience of the roads. Don’t drive into large puddles. Waters rise quickly and can be deceptive. Every year someone drives into what looks like just some water flowing across a road and gets swept away and drowns. Stay safe, stay home.

Usually, while it’s pouring like that, it is during an electircal storm. These will not be your grandma’s severe thunderstorms. Do not equate the Texas thunderstorm with the ones on the coast. We have winds of up to 70 mph and more than one kind of lightning. There’s “heat lightning” which jumps from cloud to cloud, which can be distant and soothing, almost, then there’s the more conventional kind that flies down out of the sky and zaps things like boats out on the lake and radio towers and cars out on a flat plain and the tree in your front yard. If you’re driving, don’t touch any metal inside the car during an electrical storm. Stay inside the house if you can, because things do fall and fly around under such conditions. And also because of the Big Thing in Texas weather.

Yes, we have tornados. You will want to have a viable tornado alert plan in your home. Even though the number of houses in Fort Worth hit by tornados has been very few in recent decades (the famous one that hit the Bank One Tower downtown and several other buildings left damage of 2 lives lost, 6 seriously insured and a $500 million repair bill) but we go on alert at least once or twice a year, usually in spring. 

The way you know about the alert is either 1) you have a severe weather radio, which I urge you to purchase, and it switches on to give you a weather warning from the NWS, or 2) you hear the sirens. The tornado sirens in the city of Fort Worth sound like an air raid.

That actually is not the worst weather sound you can hear, though. They say the tornado sounds like a freight train when it comes and if the winds are kicking up badly or you hear something in the distance that doesn’t seem good you’ll want to go in the bathroom, in the tub, or a closet away from windows, or, ideally, in the crawl space under the house. You can have a “safe room” constructed for about $10,000, but most people just take their chances. Which is always what you have to do, with anything, and certainly with Texas weather. But — forewarned is fore-armed. So there you have it, a thumbnail sketch of what you should know.

Visit this page on About.com for best places to hide from a tornado at home.