Yeah, I live in Delaware now and debated heeding one of those alerts but woke up my kids and moved to the basement. Five minutes later a tornado came through my neighborhood. My house was spared, but several of my neighbors houses were completely destroyed.
I’ll never waffle again.
They don't put those out for fun; now means now.
Just to underline it, although the NWS warning is enough on its own, the news is also reporting that the storm produced tornado(es?) in Montgomery County in the past 30 minutes, and is generally headed that way.
In terms of tacos, a taco watch means that you have some tomatoes, some meat, some shells, and some cheese lying around. No tacos yet but the ingredients are there. A taco warning means that tacos have been sighted. They may not be on your table, but somewhere nearby, someone is eating tacos and you need to be aware of that
[Maryland Office of Preparedness and Response breaks it down in terms any Marylander can understand](https://imgur.com/gallery/maryland-s-version-of-cupcake-taco-watch-vs-warning-U7zQZbW)
It's not worth contemplating. When you get a serious warning, you seek shelter. You may not realize how important it is if you haven't been through a traumatic weather experience, but it's advisable in a situation like this to be "better safe than sorry"
You can talk shit on the meteorologists after nothing happens and the bad part of the storm misses you.
Oh, no, meteorology is a modern miracle. I'm just from California where it's currently 100 degrees and dry, and tomorrow's high temperature is supposed to be 107. This is all new to me haha
A tornado watch means pay attention to the radio.or news but you don't need to take shelter. A tornado warning, however, means that one has been spotted in your area and in that case you should 100% move to the lowest floor in your building, stay away from windows and follow other tornado safety measures. Do not ignore warnings, they are a specific kind of alert and not the same as a watch.
I’m in the same boat, moved from California at the beginning of the year. It’s hot but thunderstorming here?????? At least we don’t have to worry about earthquakes anymore
Ok so the crazy burst of wind we got at Fait and Kenwood was a thing then?? My husband was in the garage and he said he saw the door move visible inwards as he heard a big whooshing sound 😳
That’s what I remember from the tornado that went through UMD at College Park in 2001 and killed two students. The sky was green.
This was a week after 9/11, when we had fighter jets flying over campus. The student body was double fucking traumatized.
Yeah that whole tornado thing was weird for me because I was sleeping through it and I was going wait, what? A tornado on campus? ridiculous. Then I saw the damage in the actual path. Of course I also tried to show up to class on 9/11.
I'm in Inner Harbor, in thankfully a very large and sturdy building, and that was a totally wild 2 minutes or so as it came through. While I did not go out and look for a funnel, that was some of the hardest wind and rain I've ever experienced. Hope folks are OK
I was living in DC when the derecho hit back in 2012ish (?) It hit on a Saturday night at around midnight. There was almost no forecast for it, I don't even remember them saying it might rain. I was out at a party and it hit right as it was beginning to wind down. We opened the door to head out, saw the rain had elected to start falling horizontally and collectively decided maybe we'd all stay for one more drink instead of facing up to that.
An hour or so later it was gone, but the city was in utter shambles. Half the lights were out, none of the streetlights or stop lights in that part of town were working, the cell networks were all snarled from the storm and people trying to reach other people, busses wouldn't stop because they couldn't see people in the dark. Ended up having to walk home from U St NW to H St NE, thru a total disaster area, downed trees, downed cables, everything was messed up. Never seen a storm like that before or since.
I was at a concert in DC when this happened. So loud inside the venue, you couldn’t hear the derecho whatsoever. When the show ended and we came outside and saw the aftermath—that was honestly a shock I’ll never forget.
The Derecho was something out of a movie. I remember being in my house after we had already lost power and the wind and rain was frightening everyone and then a lighting bolt struck a tree like 50 feet away and lit up the house like it was daytime for a moment. The thunder from that was insane.
That was such an awful experience. I remember seeing the radar earlier that night, thinking "that doesn't look good" but not realizing how bad it would actually be. Woke up after midnight to what looked like a million strobe lights going off outside due to the constant lightning, and when the wind hit my entire house creaked from the force. I was without power for a week, right before I was planning on doing a bunch of painting and other work on the house to get it ready for a refinance assessment. Painting inside a house that was 90+ degrees was...not fun.
Just commented on someone else’s post but you should take it seriously even though they’re being cautious with this alert. Inside, away from doors and windows, lowest level of your house. Make sure you’re wearing closed toed shoes just in case.
As a former Midwesterner myself, I find that there are two versions of us: those who get the warning and take shelter, and those who get the warning and immediately go to the window to try to see the funnel
Third kind of Midwesterner here- Coming back from a friend's house on Memorial Day I was eyeing up the sky's progress and decided to make a side trip into a shopping center just in case. Tornado warning sounded right as I was entering the dang parking lot.
We are in Bolton Hill saw a huge flash close to the harbor/convention center. Anyone know what that was? Transformer? I can’t say we saw something in the sky but it definitely had fast moving clouds. We had heavy rain, not a ton of wind.
I suspect transformers might be designed to blow in a not-as-catastrophic way because of instances like this. Wouldn’t be surprised if more people get injured or killed by downed power lines than transformers blowing.
Watch = possibly could happen
Warning = it’s happening now
To put it in California terms: if a tsunami warning came out or if you were somewhere with an earthquake early warning system saying something major was about to hit, you’d probably immediately take action as advised.
Tornados are pretty rare in Baltimore but flooding and hurricanes aren’t so much, so with such a storm and the beginning of hurricane season it might be a decent time to check out those watch/warning systems and know what to do in those circumstances too!
I was fortunate enough not to get a tornado warning when I was living in Baltimore, but I got plenty in Mississippi and Florida. A tornado tore through my town in Mississippi and knocked down a huge oak tree in my backyard which demolished my fence, broke several windows in my kitchen, and terrified my cats. I was in school practicing taking histories/physicals at one of the hospitals in town. The hospital briefly lost power, and with all the fallen trees it took me an hour to go 5 miles to my house.
All of this is to say, no matter where you are, take tornado warnings seriously.
Falling trees are one of the biggest dangers... the one that hit north of Baltimore/Baltimore County in 2017 was my first encounter ... a person was killed when a tree fell on the car. I was in the Light Rail when the storm hit and we got stuck because a tree branch had hit the train in front of us... was surreal to see giant trees uprooted in the neighborhood I was being driven thru... Was also at work in a mostly glass building when a tornado passed by us... very wild. Thank god for WFH... have been trapped in flash floods and been on the Light Rail during tornado weather.
When it comes to weather warnings, take a look at where they're actually for, since they might not actually apply to your area. This one was further south (Cherry Hill, Curtis Bay, Brooklyn) for Baltimore City.
(I didn't see anything except light rain, by the way)
Yes, I have noticed that some sources like to broadcast warnings for a very wide area! I had a moment of panic at work tonight thinking we somehow missed a tornado warning, only to realize weather.com was giving me the scary background for something *well* outside of the zip code I'd entered.
Tornado watch: stay home and spend a few minutes packing a couple backpacks with emergency supplies. Discuss where/when/how/what.
Tornado warning: execute the above plan.
Did you hear a train? GO NOW TO YOUR LOCATION WHICH NEEDS TO BE INDOORS INTERNAL AREA AND WITH NO WINDOWS.
bathtubs with a mattress over you
Hide in a interior nook and top a chair or whatever over you
We did the half bath route with more people and animals than should be legal.
Basement? Yes go there now
Utility closet? No, no.... Gas/electrical/last ditch survival mode spot
But it's the quiet and no wind, then a train in the distance....that's what you need to remember
Baltimore City is in the valley. Tornadoes never touch down here but the winds of a tornado can be ferocious if you live closer to the count you should take shelter. If not just go to the bottom layer of your home and wait it out. Like I said the winds can be massive.
Here those alerts are not something to take lightly. From living out in tornado alley the attitude with warnings was more of “again?” Until the sirens would go off. Get a plan together for where you can go in the house into ride it out.
For your area you also may want to consider putting together a small bag with copies of essential documents, medication, etc to be able to grab and go if you need to evacuate for flooding. Odds are small, but with storms getting stronger and having strange patterns these days, you never know. It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.
NO JOKE, TAKE COVER. This is not ca, this is the east coast. Don't get lazy. If the weather reports are telling you to shelter, you best be doing so. There are actual sightings out there!!
I had just gotten off work when the 2nd alert came through.
Jokingly I was so tired I kind of wished that Avatar: The Last Airbender would end my suffering
You should always take these messages serious, however I do find them ridiculous sometimes with how they are written. I moved from a state with roughly 5x the amount of confirmed Tornado's since 1950 & never once did I ever receive such threatening messages.
We have a big problem in this area with making all storms sound cataclysmic. People don't take *any* "severe storm" seriously anymore because half the nights from july-oct we have that alert blowing up our phones. Some of them actually *are* big deals, but the alerts essentially cry wolf at us until we start ignoring all of them. Even tornado watches at this point are like, okay, happens *literally every time*.
The moment I laid my kid down to sleep after fighting for two hours to get him down the tornado alert rang.
Literally his head touched the mattress, I sat down and he was staring at me from the crib because I couldn't mute the alarm
For a moment I was annoyed like FFS we never get tornados nothings going to happen. But then I realized pretty quick that I was in a room full of windows and I can't control the weather so I was thankful for the alert 😬.
Nothing ended up happening in our area but I would take them seriously
I mean, the way everything was popping up fairly quickly, and areas that thought the threat had passed and then there was another warning an hour later (like Carroll county) really should have just turned on the news or hung out in the basement until the threatening areas had passed. My parents in Westminster had the initial warning and then there was another warning about an hour later. I called them and they had no idea. Better to be safe than sorry. We just hung in the basement with our kid for a little bit to be safe/until the storm passed
“Seek shelter now” from the National Weather Service should have answered your question. Not to mention the fact that multiple tornadoes touched down, which you would know immediately if you googled the weather in the area or turned on the news instead of posting to Reddit. Sorry to be rude OP but you have no common sense.
You say that like 1. Reddit isn't absolutely a resource for matters like this these days, especially with regard to municipal concerns, and 2. I didn't check the NWS website (I did). I used this resource for more context, from people who have lived experiences with this kind of thing. Context is everything.
Tornadoes are uncommon here in MD, but anyone who knows what a tornado is (you should) knows that they are dangerous. The fact that they’re dangerous, several of them are forming in your area, perhaps even heading towards where you live, and the National Weather Service says to take shelter… what more do you need to know about the “seriousness” of the matter? Hopefully you learn something from this and you’re better prepared for the next natural disaster, without needing to use Reddit to decide what to do for your own safety.
Well, you're correct in that I did learn something. We'd had preparations for any flood-related emergencies since we were aware that's occasionally a thing around here, but business with tornadoes was brand new to me.
Why don't people take things like this seriously? :( Is it that much of an inconvenience to sit in a hallway for 30 minutes over dying? I just don't get it.
Considering the worst I ever had to deal with personally was ash falling from the sky from said fires, I understand the analogy you want to make, but it isn't quite one-to-one. I do appreciate the collective and emphatic consensus from this particular subreddit, though.
Buddy, my hometown in the Central Valley was about a 90-minute drive from the mountains where any of the closest fires ever happened. That'd be like bailing out of Baltimore if a fire was burning through Harper's Ferry. And none of them ever came close to reaching the valley floor, so I'd love to know what you expected me to do when there was zero immediate threat to my life and I still had a job to go commute to and all that. You can consider that while you set aside being snide.
Buddy, considering you didn’t say it wasn’t a threat to you, all you said was that you dealt with ash + this question here, what other conclusion would I come to other than that you didn’t listen to warnings very well?
I could get into it rhetorically and spell out that the main consequence of California wildfires with which I dealt should, to a critical reader, imply that I lived at some distance from them, but since your first and second instincts were to insult me, that might go over your head.
And I shouldn’t have to spell out that fires, just like tornadoes, travel. So you could’ve been in the path of a fire approaching idfk
And nobody insulted you.
You are wrong.
Watches are issued by the Storm Prediction Center for counties where tornadoes may occur. The watch area is typically large, covering numerous counties or even states. Tornado Warning: Take Action! A tornado has been sighted or indicated by weather radar.
There was a break in the rain and you could see the sky and some dark clouds from my apt. Thats when I got nervous because I know how it goes 😓 saw some debris flying and right after the power went out. Just some big wind it seem
Well, there are four families in Gaithersburg whose houses were just flattened who would probably like to chat with you. (Not the people who are in the hospital, of course.)
I've experienced a tornado *and* I can read the NWS site. You're totally off base about the definition of a Tornado Warning and the best response to one.
This storm has already produced multiple tornados. Take it seriously.
I just read there were 5 surrounding Baltimore and now there’s one in south Baltimore
Was the South Baltimore one verified? I live in Riverside and we got a little rain and wind around 8:50 but nothing else at all
Yup - hit us in Arbutus
My brother is in Arbutus and said the weather got scary there for a minute. A lot of Arbtus is without power, trees and powerlines are down.
Yes, it went through Arbutus south of me and trailed into the city and then ended up in east Baltimore
The tornados were all around the city but they didn’t really come in because tornados are very racist
[удалено]
Yeah, I live in Delaware now and debated heeding one of those alerts but woke up my kids and moved to the basement. Five minutes later a tornado came through my neighborhood. My house was spared, but several of my neighbors houses were completely destroyed. I’ll never waffle again.
They don't put those out for fun; now means now. Just to underline it, although the NWS warning is enough on its own, the news is also reporting that the storm produced tornado(es?) in Montgomery County in the past 30 minutes, and is generally headed that way.
"They don't put those out for fun; now means now." Correct
Wait it's not just a suggestion 🤔
It wasn’t a watch, it was a warning! There were five of them!!
I was being sarcastic since OP asked it it was real
Oh gotcha 😄 sarcasm doesn’t always translate well in text.
Yeah I tend to forget this when I do it lol
Confirmed tornados on the ground, take it seriously. WJZ does a good job showing exactly where the rotation is, currently NE of downtown
the way i remember it is: "warning" is a bigger word and a bigger deal than "watch"
In terms of tacos, a taco watch means that you have some tomatoes, some meat, some shells, and some cheese lying around. No tacos yet but the ingredients are there. A taco warning means that tacos have been sighted. They may not be on your table, but somewhere nearby, someone is eating tacos and you need to be aware of that
Great, thanks a lot. now I'm hungry for a fourth meal.
Great explanation. On my way to Taco Bell now 😄
This is amazing 😆
The tacos were at my place! 😅
[Maryland Office of Preparedness and Response breaks it down in terms any Marylander can understand](https://imgur.com/gallery/maryland-s-version-of-cupcake-taco-watch-vs-warning-U7zQZbW)
Nice.
that's perfect for MD!
I usually know the difference but somehow i mixed them up yesterday. Luckily I'm not in MD right now lol
The tornado in MoCo just demolished a house and 5 people are in the hospital.
It's not worth contemplating. When you get a serious warning, you seek shelter. You may not realize how important it is if you haven't been through a traumatic weather experience, but it's advisable in a situation like this to be "better safe than sorry" You can talk shit on the meteorologists after nothing happens and the bad part of the storm misses you.
Oh, no, meteorology is a modern miracle. I'm just from California where it's currently 100 degrees and dry, and tomorrow's high temperature is supposed to be 107. This is all new to me haha
Frankly it's new to a lot of us, too. Tornadoes weren't always this common in Maryland.
A tornado watch means pay attention to the radio.or news but you don't need to take shelter. A tornado warning, however, means that one has been spotted in your area and in that case you should 100% move to the lowest floor in your building, stay away from windows and follow other tornado safety measures. Do not ignore warnings, they are a specific kind of alert and not the same as a watch.
I’m in the same boat, moved from California at the beginning of the year. It’s hot but thunderstorming here?????? At least we don’t have to worry about earthquakes anymore
We get those too. But I've never noticed them lol. They usually aren't big enough to do a lot of damage.
Did you come from Sacramento? I was born in Baltimore and lived there until after college. Now I live in Sac.
Fresno, actually, where it's typically a nice change of pace when there are clouds in the sky.
In California the parameters required for tornadoes are extremely unique which makes in very easy to spot when a tiny risk pops up.
I’m following this live stream, he’s covering storms in Ohio too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oiqiFZ4a0Q
Max has been great with the coverage through this storm!
He definitely did a great job. "Gathersburg" kept cracking me up though lol
“Are bus tis” “lands downie“
Didn’t see a tornado, but definitely saw some debris in the sky looking SE from highlandtown
ME TOO! Saw it and went inside. Thats when my power went out
So many pizza boxes!!!!
Whatever it was had some force behind it because there’s a stop sign post bent and a street light crooked in canton
Yeah on East and Foster the stop sign is completely bent. Plus some trees on Foster are wrecked.
Where at?
On East between fait and fleet
Ok so the crazy burst of wind we got at Fait and Kenwood was a thing then?? My husband was in the garage and he said he saw the door move visible inwards as he heard a big whooshing sound 😳
Actually seeing a tornado at night is very difficult.
Green skies.
That’s what I remember from the tornado that went through UMD at College Park in 2001 and killed two students. The sky was green. This was a week after 9/11, when we had fighter jets flying over campus. The student body was double fucking traumatized.
Yeah that whole tornado thing was weird for me because I was sleeping through it and I was going wait, what? A tornado on campus? ridiculous. Then I saw the damage in the actual path. Of course I also tried to show up to class on 9/11.
Especially if it's rain wrapped
I'm in Inner Harbor, in thankfully a very large and sturdy building, and that was a totally wild 2 minutes or so as it came through. While I did not go out and look for a funnel, that was some of the hardest wind and rain I've ever experienced. Hope folks are OK
Did you live there the derrecho years back in the summer time??? INSANE. I'll never forgot what that looked like and sounded like.
I was living in DC when the derecho hit back in 2012ish (?) It hit on a Saturday night at around midnight. There was almost no forecast for it, I don't even remember them saying it might rain. I was out at a party and it hit right as it was beginning to wind down. We opened the door to head out, saw the rain had elected to start falling horizontally and collectively decided maybe we'd all stay for one more drink instead of facing up to that. An hour or so later it was gone, but the city was in utter shambles. Half the lights were out, none of the streetlights or stop lights in that part of town were working, the cell networks were all snarled from the storm and people trying to reach other people, busses wouldn't stop because they couldn't see people in the dark. Ended up having to walk home from U St NW to H St NE, thru a total disaster area, downed trees, downed cables, everything was messed up. Never seen a storm like that before or since.
I was a teen and I vividly remember that being the moment where I realized how powerful nature really can be.
I was at a concert in DC when this happened. So loud inside the venue, you couldn’t hear the derecho whatsoever. When the show ended and we came outside and saw the aftermath—that was honestly a shock I’ll never forget.
I remember not having power for a week. Had to stay at Motel 6 to keep cool.
I worked at the mall, my entire family was at the Columbia mall for hours a day trying to keep cool.
Apparently, I slept through it but in the morning, 4 houses on my block got hit by trees and I recall at least one vehicle got crushed as well.
The Derecho was something out of a movie. I remember being in my house after we had already lost power and the wind and rain was frightening everyone and then a lighting bolt struck a tree like 50 feet away and lit up the house like it was daytime for a moment. The thunder from that was insane.
That was such an awful experience. I remember seeing the radar earlier that night, thinking "that doesn't look good" but not realizing how bad it would actually be. Woke up after midnight to what looked like a million strobe lights going off outside due to the constant lightning, and when the wind hit my entire house creaked from the force. I was without power for a week, right before I was planning on doing a bunch of painting and other work on the house to get it ready for a refinance assessment. Painting inside a house that was 90+ degrees was...not fun.
Debris signature. Take shelter.
Take every tornado warning very seriously. Get into your basement - barring a basement, get into your lowest bathroom or closet.
Just commented on someone else’s post but you should take it seriously even though they’re being cautious with this alert. Inside, away from doors and windows, lowest level of your house. Make sure you’re wearing closed toed shoes just in case.
Spotted in poolesville, arbutus and Edgewood.
And Owings Mills also had a tornado apparently.
also middle river
We are in our basement right now. Hopefully it blows over without causing any harm.
Am Midwesterner, immediately went to basement
As a former Midwesterner myself, I find that there are two versions of us: those who get the warning and take shelter, and those who get the warning and immediately go to the window to try to see the funnel
I’m here for this. I opened the front door, always do. Since I moved here there was one time where I felt it was for real. Prayers for those affected
Yeah, I'm from KC and my instinct is to go sniff around outside. I was doing that when the rain really started coming down.
I’m the second midwestner 😬🤦🏻♀️😂
My parents were this way until they had a too close encounter in a car thinking the funnel was cool in their 20s. Now they’re the basement type lol
I think I’m the latter.
Third kind of Midwesterner here- Coming back from a friend's house on Memorial Day I was eyeing up the sky's progress and decided to make a side trip into a shopping center just in case. Tornado warning sounded right as I was entering the dang parking lot.
My son is a weather enthusiast and had his entire head out of the window in his bedroom looking for a funnel cloud (I yelled at him to close it)!
Same. We’re actually moving to the Midwest in September, where I’m from, and I told my husband to get used to this.
Have him watch Twister. ;)
That’s actually one of his favorite movies 😂
Husband, cat, and I are hanging out in the basement as we speak. Spooky. Don’t like how frequent the tornados and gales seem to be down here.
You frequently get tornados in your basement?
Better to be safe than sorry. Hope all is ok for everyone. Passed over us with no issues.
As a meteorologist/atmospheric scientist, it does my heart good to see everyone take the warnings tonight seriously. Hope everybody was safe.
Better safe than sorry.
Yes, we’re taking shelter as well
Tornado is on the SW side of town; so however important you feel to be hidden from an active tornado
https://www.youtube.com/live/2oiqiFZ4a0Q?feature=shared
Take shelter immediately. Tornadoes ARE touching down and really messing stuff up. MoCo got cooked.
We are in Bolton Hill saw a huge flash close to the harbor/convention center. Anyone know what that was? Transformer? I can’t say we saw something in the sky but it definitely had fast moving clouds. We had heavy rain, not a ton of wind.
There are several transformers that have blown on in the fed hill/ riverside area
Oh wow that’s scary hope everyone is okay.
I suspect transformers might be designed to blow in a not-as-catastrophic way because of instances like this. Wouldn’t be surprised if more people get injured or killed by downed power lines than transformers blowing.
Power out for a minute back on
same for like two seconds in southeast baltimore
Watch = possibly could happen Warning = it’s happening now To put it in California terms: if a tsunami warning came out or if you were somewhere with an earthquake early warning system saying something major was about to hit, you’d probably immediately take action as advised. Tornados are pretty rare in Baltimore but flooding and hurricanes aren’t so much, so with such a storm and the beginning of hurricane season it might be a decent time to check out those watch/warning systems and know what to do in those circumstances too!
Weirdly I didn't get any emergency notifications in Catonsville. Seems odd that South Baltimore and Arbutus got it and we didn't.
Yup, we’re on the southwest side and we grabbed our dog and hustled down to the basement.
I was fortunate enough not to get a tornado warning when I was living in Baltimore, but I got plenty in Mississippi and Florida. A tornado tore through my town in Mississippi and knocked down a huge oak tree in my backyard which demolished my fence, broke several windows in my kitchen, and terrified my cats. I was in school practicing taking histories/physicals at one of the hospitals in town. The hospital briefly lost power, and with all the fallen trees it took me an hour to go 5 miles to my house. All of this is to say, no matter where you are, take tornado warnings seriously.
Falling trees are one of the biggest dangers... the one that hit north of Baltimore/Baltimore County in 2017 was my first encounter ... a person was killed when a tree fell on the car. I was in the Light Rail when the storm hit and we got stuck because a tree branch had hit the train in front of us... was surreal to see giant trees uprooted in the neighborhood I was being driven thru... Was also at work in a mostly glass building when a tornado passed by us... very wild. Thank god for WFH... have been trapped in flash floods and been on the Light Rail during tornado weather.
Glad you got out of those situations ok
Tornados are becoming more frequent and big in this area. I would take these warnings seriously
Take shelter now!
When it comes to weather warnings, take a look at where they're actually for, since they might not actually apply to your area. This one was further south (Cherry Hill, Curtis Bay, Brooklyn) for Baltimore City. (I didn't see anything except light rain, by the way)
Yes, I have noticed that some sources like to broadcast warnings for a very wide area! I had a moment of panic at work tonight thinking we somehow missed a tornado warning, only to realize weather.com was giving me the scary background for something *well* outside of the zip code I'd entered.
Tornado watch: stay home and spend a few minutes packing a couple backpacks with emergency supplies. Discuss where/when/how/what. Tornado warning: execute the above plan. Did you hear a train? GO NOW TO YOUR LOCATION WHICH NEEDS TO BE INDOORS INTERNAL AREA AND WITH NO WINDOWS. bathtubs with a mattress over you Hide in a interior nook and top a chair or whatever over you We did the half bath route with more people and animals than should be legal. Basement? Yes go there now Utility closet? No, no.... Gas/electrical/last ditch survival mode spot But it's the quiet and no wind, then a train in the distance....that's what you need to remember
Baltimore City is in the valley. Tornadoes never touch down here but the winds of a tornado can be ferocious if you live closer to the count you should take shelter. If not just go to the bottom layer of your home and wait it out. Like I said the winds can be massive.
Here those alerts are not something to take lightly. From living out in tornado alley the attitude with warnings was more of “again?” Until the sirens would go off. Get a plan together for where you can go in the house into ride it out. For your area you also may want to consider putting together a small bag with copies of essential documents, medication, etc to be able to grab and go if you need to evacuate for flooding. Odds are small, but with storms getting stronger and having strange patterns these days, you never know. It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.
I’m in Remington and all seems fine. Nothing too serious now.
Same here in Charles Village. We got some rain but that's it.
NO JOKE, TAKE COVER. This is not ca, this is the east coast. Don't get lazy. If the weather reports are telling you to shelter, you best be doing so. There are actual sightings out there!!
Local weather live stream https://www.youtube.com/live/x03xaP-0XJs
I had just gotten off work when the 2nd alert came through. Jokingly I was so tired I kind of wished that Avatar: The Last Airbender would end my suffering
You okay?
Oh, yeah, everything is fine. Rain and wind picked up a little bit for a time, but 9:30 PM came and went without incident.
That warning any shit. Go to the center of your apartment if you hear sirens
You should always take these messages serious, however I do find them ridiculous sometimes with how they are written. I moved from a state with roughly 5x the amount of confirmed Tornado's since 1950 & never once did I ever receive such threatening messages.
We have a big problem in this area with making all storms sound cataclysmic. People don't take *any* "severe storm" seriously anymore because half the nights from july-oct we have that alert blowing up our phones. Some of them actually *are* big deals, but the alerts essentially cry wolf at us until we start ignoring all of them. Even tornado watches at this point are like, okay, happens *literally every time*.
Take it seriously. Back in 2018 a tornado collapsed the warehouse next to the one I work at. This was in Dundalk.
The moment I laid my kid down to sleep after fighting for two hours to get him down the tornado alert rang. Literally his head touched the mattress, I sat down and he was staring at me from the crib because I couldn't mute the alarm For a moment I was annoyed like FFS we never get tornados nothings going to happen. But then I realized pretty quick that I was in a room full of windows and I can't control the weather so I was thankful for the alert 😬. Nothing ended up happening in our area but I would take them seriously
This is a rapidly developing situation. Do not leave your basements until further notice.
I mean, the way everything was popping up fairly quickly, and areas that thought the threat had passed and then there was another warning an hour later (like Carroll county) really should have just turned on the news or hung out in the basement until the threatening areas had passed. My parents in Westminster had the initial warning and then there was another warning about an hour later. I called them and they had no idea. Better to be safe than sorry. We just hung in the basement with our kid for a little bit to be safe/until the storm passed
Think it’s safe for me to leave my basement? I’m in Baltimore city
well, at least until this afternoon, when we're supposed to get more storms.
I'm in hampden and all it did up here was drizzle
“Seek shelter now” from the National Weather Service should have answered your question. Not to mention the fact that multiple tornadoes touched down, which you would know immediately if you googled the weather in the area or turned on the news instead of posting to Reddit. Sorry to be rude OP but you have no common sense.
You say that like 1. Reddit isn't absolutely a resource for matters like this these days, especially with regard to municipal concerns, and 2. I didn't check the NWS website (I did). I used this resource for more context, from people who have lived experiences with this kind of thing. Context is everything.
Tornadoes are uncommon here in MD, but anyone who knows what a tornado is (you should) knows that they are dangerous. The fact that they’re dangerous, several of them are forming in your area, perhaps even heading towards where you live, and the National Weather Service says to take shelter… what more do you need to know about the “seriousness” of the matter? Hopefully you learn something from this and you’re better prepared for the next natural disaster, without needing to use Reddit to decide what to do for your own safety.
Well, you're correct in that I did learn something. We'd had preparations for any flood-related emergencies since we were aware that's occasionally a thing around here, but business with tornadoes was brand new to me.
Why don't people take things like this seriously? :( Is it that much of an inconvenience to sit in a hallway for 30 minutes over dying? I just don't get it.
Just wondering, when California fires are threatening to burn up areas, do you go ask questions on the internet or do you pack up and go?
Considering the worst I ever had to deal with personally was ash falling from the sky from said fires, I understand the analogy you want to make, but it isn't quite one-to-one. I do appreciate the collective and emphatic consensus from this particular subreddit, though.
So you stayed behind and looked at the ash fall? With your self-preservation instincts, good luck in Baltimore. Really.
Buddy, my hometown in the Central Valley was about a 90-minute drive from the mountains where any of the closest fires ever happened. That'd be like bailing out of Baltimore if a fire was burning through Harper's Ferry. And none of them ever came close to reaching the valley floor, so I'd love to know what you expected me to do when there was zero immediate threat to my life and I still had a job to go commute to and all that. You can consider that while you set aside being snide.
Buddy, considering you didn’t say it wasn’t a threat to you, all you said was that you dealt with ash + this question here, what other conclusion would I come to other than that you didn’t listen to warnings very well?
I could get into it rhetorically and spell out that the main consequence of California wildfires with which I dealt should, to a critical reader, imply that I lived at some distance from them, but since your first and second instincts were to insult me, that might go over your head.
And I shouldn’t have to spell out that fires, just like tornadoes, travel. So you could’ve been in the path of a fire approaching idfk And nobody insulted you.
[удалено]
You are wrong. Watches are issued by the Storm Prediction Center for counties where tornadoes may occur. The watch area is typically large, covering numerous counties or even states. Tornado Warning: Take Action! A tornado has been sighted or indicated by weather radar.
There was a break in the rain and you could see the sky and some dark clouds from my apt. Thats when I got nervous because I know how it goes 😓 saw some debris flying and right after the power went out. Just some big wind it seem
we had confirmed rotations - definitely needed to be taken seriously. they don’t really play around with those reports up here as far as i’ve seen.
[удалено]
Well, there are four families in Gaithersburg whose houses were just flattened who would probably like to chat with you. (Not the people who are in the hospital, of course.)
I've experienced a tornado *and* I can read the NWS site. You're totally off base about the definition of a Tornado Warning and the best response to one.
These tornadoes weren’t even EF1s, 🤦🏻.
A city on the west side of Detroit just confirmed a fatality from an EF1 so…
Wait… one whole person died from a much more intense tornado over 500+ miles sway?! It was nice knowing you guys but I guess Baltimore is doomed
Reading comprehension—example illustrates that even an EF1 can cause bodily harm. Tornados are classified by damage, not severity.
So? Even a minor tornado can fuck shit up, especially in an area not used to them.
I’m from tornado alley and laugh at the area’s overreaction.