Tornado Alley is a section of the United States that regularly experiences – like its name suggests – tornadoes. Most people probably recognize Oklahoma and Kansas as tornado-prone states, but there are many other surrounding states which get affected by tornadoes.
My family and I have spent quite some time in Tornado Alley, all during the peak tornado season for the southern Plains. We’ve been through Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, South Dakota, and Colorado. Before my family submerged ourselves into the region of Tornado Alley, we watched YouTube videos and read news articles on what to do in case of a tornado, and what to watch for in severe weather.
Here’s a quick fact that I learned: a tornado watch is issued (by the National Weather Service) when the weather conditions in an area are severe enough to produce a tornado. A tornado warning is issued when a tornado has touched down nearby or has been indicated by a weather radar.
Although we’ve experienced quite a few mega-storms (not to mention the daily severe weather warning), we never actually had an evacuation order – until just recently. It wasn’t more than two weeks ago when this happened.
I had just finished school and all of my assigned homework, tidied up my work area, and was ready to watch a LIVE webinar that was about to start. The whole sky was cloaked in a blanket of puffy grey clouds – which was just how it had been for the majority of the three weeks we had already spent in Colorado – and continued to grow ominously darker. An enormous cloud, a shade of blackish-blue and dark grey, spanned the entire horizon. It wasn’t too different from any other day, other than the fact that the rain hadn’t already started. The wind began to pick up, which wasn’t out of the ordinary, either. What was different from the previous weeks was 1) the fact that the sky began to turn a yellowish-green color, and 2) the super loud siren that began to blare throughout the campground. A voice over the speaker accompanied the alarm, repeating something along the lines of, “Evacuate to tornado shelter or lie on the ground away from motorized vehicles.”
Evacuate we did. I grabbed my sisters and told them that we needed to get to the tornado shelter, which at this campground, is located inside the men’s bathroom. You see, when you live in a recreational vehicle, you can’t run to a safe closet like in a house – which is why the majority of campgrounds in Tornado Alley have designated tornado shelters/rooms, which are usually located inside a main building, like the bathhouse, laundry room, or occasionally a rec room. Although it isn’t guaranteed that a tornado will plow right through your area, it also isn’t guaranteed that it won’t – and being inside an RV when a tornado hits is about as safe as being shaken and thrown around in a large tin can… which is why it is common sense to head to a tornado shelter if your phone is being angrily lit up with tornado warning texts, a siren is blasting outside, and someone over the speaker is telling you to evacuate to a tornado shelter (or lie in a ditch).
In the two seconds it took my sisters to get outside, I looked out the window in search of a rotating wall cloud or even a tornado, but didn’t find either, so I figured we had some time (although I didn’t decide to dilly-dally just because of that). Meanwhile, my mom was on a call in the car (so that she wouldn’t distract any of us from schooling). I doubt she was still in the car to experience the storm up-close – the more reasonable answer is that the alarm probably didn’t sound as shrill from inside the car, and the speaker announcement was a bit muffled to begin with. Since the doors were locked, I knocked on the window to grab her attention and pointed to the tornado shelter, where one of my sisters was entering the room. My mom opened the car door, realized what was going on, and hurried along to the shelter beside me. My dad was away on a business trip, so it was just me, my mom, and my siblings.
All of the events I just told happened within around 30 seconds. With the wind blowing stronger by the second, and the siren designating a tornado had touched down around our area, there wasn’t time to lock up the RV or the car. The only thing I brought with me was an iPad, since it had been in my hands when the alarm started.
My family was the first to reach the tornado shelter, but not too long after, other RVers joined us. Some talked about insurance, while others tried to remember if they had closed their windows. The dark cloud I mentioned earlier quickly made its way toward us, bringing along torrential rain and an unforgiving hailstorm.
I don’t believe I’d ever experienced a hailstorm before, but I’d heard plenty of stories from friends about broken windshields and dented cars that came along with it. As with everyone else (except my younger sisters and my mom), I stood right outside the tornado shelter under the covered walkway and took videos and pictures of the weather phenomenon. Hailstones the size of small ice cubes plummeted from the sky, which quickly covered the green grass in a layer of white. Cold gusty winds began to blow hailstones at my feet, and then into my hair, so I decided, along with most everyone else outside the shelter, that it was time to stop storm-watching and get inside. I’d say that two-thirds of the people headed to the laundry room, while one-third huddled inside the designated tornado shelter inside the men’s restroom. I’m actually glad that the tornado shelter was located in the men’s bathroom rather than the women’s, because the women’s restroom smelled awful. At some point in the last five months before my family had arrived at the campground, a toilet had overflowed in the ladies’ bathroom and nobody had gone in there for almost half a year, so the smell was horrendous – and mix that with the mold that’s being cultivated on a mass-scale in there. Even my dad, who lost most of his smell to Covid, could smell the foul stench from outside the room – and he couldn’t even smell an electric fire that was burning right behind the wall he was standing next to! But that’s another story!
Finally, the hail stopped and the sky began to clear up. Some people suggested it may be the calm before the storm, while others proposed that the storm was over. Not too long after, the speaker came on again, this time saying that it was safe to return to our RVs. It turned out that the storm had skirted around us, and luckily, the tornado never hit the campground.
Since that day, whenever there’s a thunderstorm (which seems to be every afternoon just after lunchtime), my two youngest sisters prepare their shoes at the door and stand by in case we have to evacuate again. They even packed their little backpacks with their important items – all their cuddly toys, pencils, crayons, other art supplies, some pretend jewelry, and an iPod :).
Due to all the stormy weather, I’ve been stuck inside for the most part of the past few weeks. That allowed me to do a lot of schoolwork, and it also made me think of a great semi-outdoor activity (that I love) which can even be done on stormy days – exploring caves! Look out for my next blog on Caves and Caverns in the United States and Europe!
Dare to explore!
Vivienne
