Last Saturday night Jett and I were playing cards (Hand, Knee and Foot, of course) with neighbors. Showers were expected, but it was a nice evening and so we were playing outdoors, on the picnic table, under the RV awning in case of rain. Just before 7pm we all received weather alerts on our cell phones warning of a possible tornado. But we have been through this drill before and knew that if it was serious then 1) the campground would send someone through with a bullhorn advising us to take cover (in the bath house or laundry – the only rigid structures around) and 2) there would be urgent advisories on TV. I turned on the TV and, yes, the local stations were having special weather coverage but I noted that the warning was to expire in about 15 minutes and no reports of an actual tornado sighting had been received. There was also an observation that the “storm was weakening.” And it wasn’t very windy and the rain was light. So I wasn’t unduly concerned.
We continued to play cards.
The rain did soon become quite heavy, but that is pretty common here. We did finally move into the RV and watched the TV for another 15 minutes before deciding to give up the game. The rain lasted another 30 minutes.
The next morning I awoke to news of an F2 tornado in Cape Coral the night before. While we were blithely playing cards, a twister was steamrolling nearly 200 homes just 15 miles to the southwest of us. As more information arrived it became apparent that not only was a real tornado on the ground at 7pm the night before, as we played cards, but that its path would have taken it directly over us, had it stayed on the ground.
The last time we had a tornado warning our strategy was to pile the dogs into the truck and take to the roads, figuring that we could outrun any funnel cloud that we sighted. That might be a decent defense in the daytime, but at 7pm, in a storm, I doubt that I could have spotted it coming at me. Heading to the bath house probably would have been the wisest move.
Continuing to play cards in that situation is not going to get me into Mensa.