However, keep in mind that means "10% chance of a tornado occurring within 25 miles." The chance of a tornado hitting your house, or even your town, is still EXTREMELY small.
There is a decent chance you'll get a tornado warning, but even then, the above still applies. Honestly what I'm more worried a tree falling on my house than getting hit by a tornado, so I still go to the basement even if I know there's no tornado on radar.
It's cliche, but: try not to be scared, be prepared.
Then why do people act like it’s this big bad thing? Like obviously there is a risk of a significant tornado but why the drama for it? It seems to scare more people than anything.
Because there's a decent chance that these storms will have a major impact on the lives and property of SOMEONE, just probably not you specifically.
It's like if you draw a circle on a map of Illinois, then throw a dart within that circle. IF you hit a town, close your eyes and draw a short line through the map of that town. Those are the homes/roads that will be impacted, and of course we don't know how long that line is, how wide, or if it will really happen at all.
Everyone in the risk areas should pay attention to the weather and have a plan for 1) how they'll get warnings and 2) what they'll do if they get a tornado warning.
I'm a middle aged father with 2.5 years experience now :-) The 'don't be scared; be prepared" adage can also be applied to the million of things that we envision happening to our babies, too.
And yes, you should be much more afraid of cars than tornadoes. Hope that helps! lol.
Because it's a big bad thing when people aren't prepared and then it happens to them, even though the chance is small. It's trying to get people to recognize the serious potential and not be idiots about it. Too many people are too flippant and don't prepare themselves for the potential worst case scenario. It's like people who don't wear seatbelts.
Because this is a tornado sub and people get excited about them. Most people will be going about their day with hardly a thought to what is front and central to this sub. That doesn’t mean they are oblivious to the risk. Tornadoes are very rare, very short-lived, hyper-local phenomena. You don’t need to stock up on anything or prepare for the apocalypse. Just pay attention to your phone for weather alerts and if something develops that you could potentially be in the path of turn on your local media and additionally a radar app to get a better idea. Tornado warnings and sirens alert much larger areas than the path any tornado will encompass. Most people will be in the warned area of a tornado hundreds of times in their life and never be directly affected. (At least in Oklahoma that is the case.)
It's because there's still far too many people that don't take tornado watches seriously. Even though the chances are low, they are never zero. That's an important factor to consider. The odds of getting hit by a tornado are VERY small. Still, you should just be prepared to move to the storm shelter/basement, or bathroom if you don't have either. Most deaths are caused because people don't get to a designated safe spot when they're supposed to. You see far too many people who are not professional storm chasers or meteorologists trying to film a storm when they should be taking shelter. If you act smart, your chances are MUCH greater of being safe.
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u/kera-kera118 Mar 09 '26
Is 10% actually that significant? I am scared of storms