By Chris Thompson
It is difficult to fully appreciate the magnitude of what happened to parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. By now you have heard the numbers and seen the video. Fortunately, we don’t see outbreaks like this very often, even less so across the Carolinas. You have to go back to March 28th, 1984 to find an outbreak event approaching this level for our region. 22 tornadoes, 57 fatalities and nearly 1000 injured across North and South Carolina.
Although there is no such thing as guaranteed safety when dealing with a tornado, there are a few things to keep in mind when thinking about tornado safety.
• Stay informed. Everybody should have a Weather Radio with the Tone Alert Feature. More information on this can be found at http://www.weather.gov/nwr. I have two in my house, and bought one for my girls’ elementary school years ago.
• Have a plan. Where to go and what to do when threatening weather is imminent. You need a plan in place before it happens so you don’t have to think about what to do. Put some thought into it now.
• Watch the weather. Know in advance if stormy weather is expected, and if it is stay in touch via TV or radio. In the event of life threatening weather, we will break into programming and stay on until the threat has passed. For more information, go to WRAL.COM, click on WEATHER and check out our Interactive Weather Guides at the bottom of the page.
Also at the bottom of the Weather page you can sign up to get email alerts and Desktop Weather.
Keep those folks who were hit in your thoughts, and hope we never see anything like that here.
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