Tornado Sirens

As I was writing that last post yesterday night, something interesting happened and I had to stop, turn off the computer and resume my blogging at a later time. See if you can guess what it was from the title of this post. Do you have a guess ready?..... Yes, that would be tornado sirens, plural. They started going off about 4:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon. We knew what they were because the whole city we live in has a tornado drill the first Wednesday of every month. I have been told the following about tornado sirens, "When you hear them, you should go into the basement. But what everyone actually does is go outside to see where it is!" I mentioned this to Rob and we decided to be like everyone else and go outside to check it out. I've also learned that there really is a calm before the storm and if the wind dies down (it was blowing like crazy at this time) then you really need to get to a safe place because the tornado is coming. Well, we didn't get to see much and then the siren stopped. Well, it stopped for about 10 or 15 minutes until it went off again! We went outside again to check it out but there wasn't much to see- just a lot of dark clouds, wind and a few rain drops. We turned on the tv when he heard the first siren and the screen was completely black with big white lettering that said something like, "Tornado Warning! Get to a safe place immediately" and that was kind of crazy. But we still went outside and I took some pictures. You can see how dark the sky got.



I was wondering if we were being the dumb people from California who run outside while all the smart Iowa people go to a safe place. I was thinking of all the not-so-bright people I saw at Yellowstone Park when I was much younger going up to take pictures with the wild buffalo even though warnings were posted everywhere about how dangerous they are. I remember thinking, "That is not very smart- they could be killed doing that!"




Anyhow, when I got to work today, everyone else said they went outside too so I don't feel so dumb. We later heard that two tornados did touch down here in our city but neither were close to our house. One was pretty close to our old apartment so that would've been pretty exciting if we still lived there.