Tornadoes???!!!

So if ya read my "about me" thingy then you know one of the reasons I moved out of Florida was to escape from the hurricanes. I knew there was the occasional nasty bit of Springtime weather to put up with here, but unless there is a repeat of the big ice storm that happened here a bunch of years ago, I figured I could handle the rest of Momma Nature's bits of whimsey.
The first thing I found out after arrival was that the local news stations treat a thunderstorm like the Apocolypse....I mean they just don't shut up their yaps for the entire time one is brewing....or has a chance of brewing....or is thinking about brewing anytime in the next 24 hours. Now this is pretty much over the top for somebody who lived in an area that had thunderstorms every single afternoon like clockwork all Summer, and any other time hot & cool air decided to mix it up. I could be mowing the lawn & watch storms a few blocks away...time it just right and finish up when the first few drops started to fall.
Another words...no big deal, just move yer tushie if you saw any lightening or heard thunder less than 7 or 8 miles away. Very rarely there might be a funnel cloud, but even if there was, little damage occured.
Now the news coverage for this stuff was a brief mention of the usual storms brewing & which side of the highway they were on. Not like for hurricanes which cause daaays of coverage with no real change of information from that given in the first half hour until the booger hits and destroys everything for miles.
Anyway, there's a lot of warnings here at the first drop of rain or heavy gust of wind....just like when the first few snowflakes start coming down. It's always made me wonder what these newsfolks would do if this was like South Florida every day....or like some more northern state where it really snows. I remember visiting our cabin in Pennsylvania during the winter back in the 70's.....it was nothing to finish the drive up by stopping to put chains on the tires & I would go for long walks in the woods while it was -12 degrees. Put an inch on the ground around here & they're closing the schools! I guess expecting parents & bus drivers to slow down for the conditions is no longer part of the equation....gotta protect the folks from themselves or they might sue the city for getting in an accident.

So yesterday I'm trying to watch some TV & getting constant interuptions from the weather broadcasters about a nasty thunderstorm that's beating it up from Alabama & Mississippi, trailing twisters in its' wake. Already done some serious damage in Memphis, beat the heck out of a little college and was headed straight for Nashville.
Now this really was a serious event, several people lost their lives, more were injured and many homes were completely destroyed. Nothing funny about any of it. The problem is the news coverage....the channel I watch because it has what seems to be the best (ok....the easiest for me to grasp!) radar images has a terrible tendency to vomit up information as soon as they get it....no matter where or from whom it comes. I don't think double checking is on their "to-do" list, so in the space of 30 minutes they will report all kinds of figures for damage, numbers of hurt, injured, missing. But they NEVER go back and clarify that the original info they reported was not correct. They are so in love with the sound of their own voices that they go on with barely a breath & you can hear the excitment bubbling over. This tends to panic people.
Panicked people tend to do the wrong thing and sit in front of the TV for the running status reports. They become numb. Then while this particular storm was passing right over the TV station itself, the broadcasters set the brilliant example of not taking cover....in fact, they are sending little news interns OUTSIDE in the hail to collect pieces of it to bring inside to show on camera.....where it doesn't show up at all since it's melting & white & lying on a white plate!
This happened to be the big election night.....not like I really give a ratz azz about it, but during all the storm coverage they ran an impossible to read bit of info across the bottom of the screen about 3 times. None of the storm's effects came anywhere near me, but I was ready if it did. It wasn't until 4:45 this morning that I experienced any influence from the weather & that was a loud clap of thunder that woke me from the sleep I'd finally started to get around 1AM, followed by some brisk winds, a quick downpour followed by some normal rain......none of this was more than briefly mentioned by the media. Now that thunder & lightening was right over my head & I kind of WANTED some info.....nothing! I resorted to tuning to the static feed on channel 1, which is a repeating radar map of this general area, the truly local forecast.....which is showing zero rain in the rain guage as usual even when it's been raining all bloomin day, and a national weather radar map.....all this accompanied by the less than soothing sounds of some radio broadcast which has nothing what-so-ever to do with the frickin weather!
Finally the broadcast stations get around to mentioning the weather is starting to calm down as it passes to the east.....but there are now tornado watches issued for my area, among others & they pretty much hand off any further developments off to the stations that broadcast out of the Knoxville area.....which is great, but MY NEWS COMES OUT OF THE NASHVILLE AREA!!
Well, all's well anyhow.....it was a non-event in my pretty secure spot. I happen to live in a small dip of a minor hill....surrounded on 3 sides by slightly higher areas and just a little down the hill is another hill. In other words.....I kind of live in the ditch they tell you to throw yourself into if you are out in the open and see a tornado coming. Three sides of my downstairs are surrounded by earth, the doors are all steel except for the one protected by 25 feet of deck and two of the rooms don't even have windows....the whole thing is solid cbs block & cement......I don't worry about a safe room. The upstairs is ground level on 3 sides, solid logs & only a few feet stick up above the hill. I've got lots of trees that could fall down, but only a few close enough to hit any part of the house if they went down....could happen, but not likely from they lay of things.
The thing that gets me about all of this is the wisdom or sheer dumb luck I had to move here because of hurricanes.....to end up where they have frickin tornadoes in the middle of winter, but find myself in a pretty well protected spot.....as long as there is no ice storm....well, I AM ON A DAMN HILL & ice makes getting down a steep driveway in a car with normal tires on it a bit of a challenge!! So far it hasn't even snowed enough to let me slide down the hill on a garbage can lid, let alone iced up the driveway.......just sayin......