New And Improved Tornadoes - Disaster Preparedness

There had never been a tornado in a city I lived in. It was in the middle of California. When I first moved to Fresno, California, it was tornado free.  I liked that. A tornado did not sound like my idea of fun.

Not long after I moved to Fresno, a small filler article in the local newspaper mentioned that a little dust devil had taken the corrugated metal roof off of a shed at the airport.

I had watched very small dust devils swirl leaves and puffs of dust in Fresno and other places before one took the roof of the airport shed. I had kind of liked them because they were fun to watch.

Dust devils are formed differently than tornadoes, but they look like small tornadoes. I decided that since there were bigger and bigger dust devils in Fresno and then we got a tornado, that it must be a process.

The first tornado in Fresno's history happened when I lived there. The news people told us it might hit us way ahead of time. We could see the sky looking black off in the distance in broad daylight. It had never looked like that before in our part of the world.

Sure enough the tornado did hit Fresno. It destroyed the local public broadcasting tower. A commercial station generously loaned the use of a tower to allow the public station to continue broadcasts until their tower was replaced. The whole state of California got very excited about that happening, because it was so unusual.

I lived in another area that got its first tornado. They had dust devils growing there too. Maybe there is no connection. I don't like dust devils any more though.

A world record in tornadoes was set last year for number of them in one month and the month also broke the yearly record. There was more damage too.

Weather records for highs and lows have been set all over the world lately. This is not going to get better in our lifetimes. It is not going to get better in the lifetimes of children who are not born yet. We have to prepare to face worse weather records all over the world.

That means hotter weather records and cold weather records, wind weather records and rain weather records. This is climate change. Even if nothing really bad has happened where you live now, it is almost certain to happen eventually and probably soon. You can not prepare for everything, but you can do some general preparedness that will help in almost any kind of disaster.

Make yourself a go bag in case your disaster means you will have to leave to escape with your life. When you learn that you need to evacuate, grab your go bag, your babies and pets and get out as fast as you can. Do not wait. Waiting to evacuate can get you killed.

I already posted about go bags and will add more to it. Please read them and make your go bag.

I plan to keep writing about ways to make your own emergency preparedness items so that more people can afford to prepare. Please share this information so that other people can be safe as well.