For the next couple of days, my city (town?) is in a severe weather zone. The Weather Channel says, “There is a likely risk of severe weather today. Wind, tornadoes and hail are possible. Look out for large hail and powerful tornadoes. Have a plan and be prepared.”. This risk continues through tomorrow; the National Weather Service has given a Hazardous Weather Outlook (pre-Watches and Warnings) to our area.
Our house has weather radio and our phones have weather programs with warnings. Our basement has bottled water and emergency kits. We remember the tornadoes in Utica, IL and Joplin, MO (home town-adjacent areas for each of us) and take severe weather seriously.
Weather awareness has changed significantly since I was young, and I was in one of the few areas with any form of local weather response. When I was young, most people got their television through antennas, and so network TV carried tornado watches and warnings. I don’t believe stations posted severe thunderstorm watches or warnings back then. Our middle-of-nowhere town was in the Chicago market, yet 90 miles away, so we watched warnings in which we may have been obliquely mentioned. However, because there was no way we could receive TV waves in a river valley, we had cable TV in LaSalle County, IL, which was novel 55 years ago. This was important to the current discussion because we had our own emergency warnings.
At the time, FEMA didn’t exist; the national civil defense organization was named Civil Defense. Our Civil Defense person was Bill Bailey, who I believe was the Sheriff. And he delighted in Civil Defense. When a tornado watch or warning occurred, he cut into our regularly scheduled programming with emergency tones. He then droned on about the warning of the moment. Originally, the screen would go back, but I think later interruptions had this symbol:
We would all go to our basements like good little Midwesterners. Ok, I kid. I would go to the basement, as would my mother. My sister and dad went out to the front porch to watch for tornadoes. I was scared to death of tornadoes back then (and many other things as well, but not spiders or snakes or bees or wasps).
Nowadays, we have a much better warning system. We have warnings about weather days in advance from the National Weather Service. We have FEMA with not only warnings, but sophisticated operations in the aftermath of severe weather. But I remember when all we had in LaSalle County, IL, was Bill Bailey.
Words Like Me 