Good question!
By far the biggest threat during a tornado is debris—in particularly high winds, even blades of grass can travel quickly enough to embed themselves into telephone poles. Basically, when a tornado is imminent, you have to think of it like a bunch of people in a mafia movie coming by to shoot up the place—your goal is to put as many walls between you and the projectiles as possible.
If your basement is entirely belowground (i.e., no windows), this is ideal—you’ve got the entire first floor between you and the storm. Most basements, however, are only partially submerged, and often you’ll have windows that can be broken and become debris—by the way, don’t waste time trying to open windows to “equalize pressure” or whatever during a tornado, since it won’t work and the tornado will open the windows for you anyway.
Basically, you want as much stuff between you and the storm as possible—if there’s somewhere interior like a crawlspace under the stairs that’s not within sight of any windows or exterior walls, that would be ideal. Even if you don’t have windows in your basement, stay away from walls that back directly onto the outside (remember the mafia-movie dudes—one wall won’t be great protection). If you’ve got no other options, it’s sometimes best to drag a couple of mattresses or a study table down with you, and hide under that makeshift cover in the center of the room, as far from all external walls as possible.
If you don’t have a basement, you want to find an interior room (usually something like a bathroom) that puts as many walls as possible between you and the outside. Once again, dragging a mattress on top of you can reduce the amount of debris that actually makes it to your body. The objective is always to put as many barriers as possible between you and the storm.
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#weather #tornadoes #the more you know
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