Today is going to be a bad weather day in Maryville, according to the weather forecast. We are at a 10% chance for bad weather, and there may even be tornadoes in the mix. Tornadoes? It’s almost November!

I guess some people call tornadoes ‘cyclones’; pretty much the same thing. A severely hazardous storm typified by a wind vortex. The standard operating procedure for a tornado is to go to the basement, for presumably the walls in the basement don’t collapse on you. There’s also less danger of being hit by flying glass. If you don’t have a basement, choose an internal room on the first floor without windows, which is often a bathroom.

I remember life before extremely accurate weather forecasting. We generally didn’t know a tornado was passing by until the tornado showed up, and then the civil defense warning would be broadcast on our tv. Then the siren would go off (this was usually the siren summoning our volunteer firefighters to an incident.)

Today, we have a fire siren in town to warn us if a tornado is imminent. But we also have our weather forecasts, our phones and the watch/warning system. We can prepare a day in advance; I know the expected time for severe storms and I can plan accordingly.

It’s interesting to look at today and reminisce about how life has changed. I guess that makes me an old person (*sigh*).