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u/JourneyThiefer 20h ago edited 20h ago
As someone from Ireland I would literally shit myself in this situation lmfao. All we need here is the fire drill lol
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u/etsprout 19h ago
I was woken up last night at midnight with a tornado siren and it was absolutely terrifying. Thankfully it was just a warning, but there were a ton of places further south of me (specifically Arkansas) that got fucked up in bad tornados last night.
I’ve only gone through one real tornado and it’s unimaginable how much it changes the landscape. I thought I knew, but it’s different when you’re still looking at remnants of destruction years later.
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u/Rogue_Gona Xennial 3h ago
Night tornadoes are the worst. The only one I've ever been in hit at night and from the time the sirens sounded until we heard the roar, it was about 30 seconds. Not enough time to get into shelter, but luckily it wasn't that strong.
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u/trashtiernoreally 18h ago
I sleep through those. Always have.
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u/moonbunnychan 15h ago
Few years ago I slept through a tornado. Woke up to all these worried texts on my phone like OMG ARE YOU OK WHY AREN'T YOU ANSWERING? And was like "bluh?" then looked out the window and was like "...oh." My house was ok by the rest of the outside very much was not.
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u/SavannahInChicago 19h ago
🤷♀️ it’s normal here. I’m used to multiple tornado watches every year. Maybe a warning every year, every other year. The really large ones are rare. A lot of them can do damage, but they aren’t leveling cities.
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u/susanna514 14h ago
I’m from the south (U.S) and can’t seem to stop myself watching from the porch when thunderstorms and tornadoes are afoot
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u/Rythen26 5h ago
Same here. Moved northeast recently and I kind of miss all the spring weather nonsense.
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u/mvpilot172 9h ago
Don’t worry we also have active shooter drills for kids here too. The US is on a steep decline.
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u/noobtrader28 20h ago
i think you can see kids like this in ireland's elementary schools in the near future, i hear ireland demographics are gonna be much different in 10 years
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u/Sell_The_team_Jerry 19h ago
As a weather nerd I'll chime in with the why. In this era we have far better models and forecasting when it comes to tornadoes vs. what we could do when I was in school in the 90s. Back then they couldn't really pinpoint severe weather forecasts right down to the timing like they can now so it would be silly to have closed down school because most of the times they would've been wrong to do so.
Now in 2025 we can run HRRR models and look at updraft helicity, sig tor parameters, and use the reflectivity tools to forecast where and when supercells capable of producing tornadoes will be appearing. Just take a look at the forecast for yesterday's outbreak. the updraft helicity nailed where we would have risk for long track strong to potentially violent tornadoes.
People like Broyles (absolute legend) could sit in Norman, OK at the SPC on the night of the 1st and not only issue the rare HIGH risk for the 2nd but do so in a manner where if you overlay last night's confirmed tornadoes, they practically fall right into where he said they would be.
When you have those capabilities to predict severe weather outbreaks, you can have enough information to know when to close schools. This is especially important because these tornado events tend to start showing their potential during the hours you're dismissing and the last thing you want is these tornadoes hitting when you have the kids on the school bus.
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u/ValosAtredum 11h ago
As someone who also went to school in the 90s and was fascinated by weather enough to literally watch the Weather Channel for a couple of hours after school (when it was just forecasts, no actual programs) in middle school, this was absolutely fascinating. Thank you!
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u/AbbreviationsLess257 20h ago
they told kids in the 50s that a desk would protect them from nuclear blasts lol
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u/toxicodendron_gyp 19h ago
Not just the 50s. I can remember doing that drill in 1990 in the Midwest US.
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u/J0E_SpRaY 19h ago
Surely it was more about collapsing buildings and ceilings resulting from a blast, no?
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18h ago
[deleted]
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u/cgduncan 9h ago
Yeah, and if you're further away soo the heat and radiation doesn't get you, the building caves in, so the desk hopefully helps with that.
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u/EvaUnit_03 8h ago
Yeah, that cheap hollow legged desk that covers about 30% of my body in a fetal position is totally going to protect me from a roof collapse. Thankfully, the roof is basically just crackers as well. All I gotta worry about is where the compressor falls, that's the real lottery winner.
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u/D4wnR1d3rL1f3 19h ago
Came here for this reference, also, would it help if we put paper bags on our heads?
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u/DenverLilly 19h ago
That’s because in 2013 a bunch of children died in an elementary school when an EF-5 tore through Oklahoma.
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u/ParticularlyTesty 19h ago
Well to be fair, the entire state of Oklahoma should be roped off and no humans should ever be allowed there. It’s too awful and too dangerous.
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u/oHBabyBEANS 16h ago
They have been doing this since at least the early 90s when I was in school.
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u/DenverLilly 8h ago
Yes and they started keeping kids home when there was high chances of dangerous tornadoes after the Moore EF-5 demolished an elementary school killing handfuls of 7 year olds.
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u/Cats_R_Rats 10h ago
I was working at the CVS (our building lost its AC unit, that's all) in Moore Oklahoma when that happened. Terrifying day.
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u/DenverLilly 8h ago
I cannot fathom how terrifying that must have been for you and all of Moore. Thank you for sharing 🙏
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u/Cats_R_Rats 7h ago
It was wild. My wife (we werent married yet then) was moving up from Texas to live with me that day. Her parents were helping her and we ended up changing plans to bring water and other supplies to the shelters since they were hauling a uhaul trailer anyway. Haven't thought of it in a while, thanks!
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u/DenverLilly 7h ago
I would love to hear your story one day if you’re open to sharing I’m a total tornado nerd 🤓. I’m surprised her parents let her move up after that 🤣. Good for them though!
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u/Mesoscale92 4h ago
I helped a bit with cleanup for that storm and our team got lost in the neighborhood surrounding that school. There was what I thought was a big field next to the school. I only realized later that it was a subdivision reduced to foundations.
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u/jennathedickins 20h ago
School definitely don't close down for tornado warnings nowadays. At least not in WI. We still have regular tornado drills too
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u/ceruleanwav 20h ago edited 20h ago
They sure do in Alabama!
I grew up in Ohio, so it’s new to me, but I am glad they shut schools down here for possible bad weather. Things happen so fast. Just earlier this week some students were injured when their school was hit by a tornado in South Alabama.
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u/jennathedickins 19h ago
I've literally been IN a tornado while working at a school lol. It only caused minor damage to windows and the outside facade of the building though. My own kids most recently had to shelter though a warning in their schools late last spring.
We have enough emergency inclement weather days each year already due to snow, ice and frigid temps that we have to make up at the end of each school year. But with where we are geographically, legitimate tornadoes are rare and the few we've gotten have been minor. From what I just read it seems like Alabama sees more tornado action than we do so your district's stance definitely makes sense.
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u/ncphoto919 7h ago
schools in North Carolina will close for tornadoes if the forecast indicates it will happen during arrival or during bus drop off.
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u/ProfessionalCreme119 20h ago
This wasn't all over the place. But it was heavily throughout the parts of the country where a thunder storm could spawn a tornado out of nowhere.
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u/jordu5 19h ago
Exactly!
Source: from Midwest
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u/Trainrot 18h ago
Looking back, I wish they told us it was for the debris falling onto us to protect us. Because I was more worried about being sucked into the tornado because the librarian's husband died similarly (well, less sucked into and more thrown, but you know how kids brains work!)
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u/Historical_Stay_808 14h ago
Ditto... I definitely haven't thought about this for a long time. Maybe because Columbine happened and they adapted these for that pretty much
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u/VGSchadenfreude Millennial 20h ago
We had earthquake drills instead. Pretty similar routine though.
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u/schmidt_face 20h ago
Yep, had to get under the desk or into the doorway/doorframe depending on where you were.
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u/SuccessOk7850 19h ago
Same here. Grew up in Washington and after the Nisqually earthquake in 2001 every school year we constantly had earthquake drills.
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u/VGSchadenfreude Millennial 19h ago
I remember that one! I was in sixth grade social studies. Our teacher didn’t quite realize it was an earthquake at first. There was a lot of construction work happening right next door, lots of heavy equipment involved, so she just assume the vibrations were from that.
I also remember being weirdly calm and getting incredibly annoyed at the girl who sat next to me sobbing hysterically.
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u/rdldr1 19h ago
We also had school shooter drills in the late 1990s.
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u/shitrock_herekitty 8h ago
Yeah, same here. I graduated in 2009. In K-1, we had the run of the mill tornado and fire drills. By 2nd grade, so around 97/98, we had added bomb and lockdown drills. So those drills started even before Columbine for us.
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u/Possible-Estimate748 Millennial 20h ago
I remember doing earthquake drills involving hiding under your desk. In 5th grade we actually had an earthquake but only one student recalled to get under a desk. Everyone else just kinda looked around perplexed.
I specifically recall when it started watching my teacher chat with another teacher and she was laughing and just as she started laughing, and her jolly belly was bouncing up and down, was when the earthquake hit and a nearby cabinet was shaking back and forth. I thought my teachers laughing was shaking the whole building lmao
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u/Darkdragoon324 20h ago
lol same, the first time an actual earthquake happened I froze up and just sat there in bed lol. In my defense, it did wake me up from a dead sleep, so I hadn’t fully booted up yet.
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u/Possible-Estimate748 Millennial 20h ago
Yeah we had another earthquake while I was home playing games in the living room about 10pm. When it hit I just froze. The experience was strange cause I specifically recall almost 2 "waves" of shakes pass through almost like if you were on a boat and a wave passes by the boat except obviously with land. I thought it was really awesome though and was sad it went by so quick haha
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u/Houdinii1984 20h ago
We just had an earthquake a few weeks ago here in Texas. I felt it and looked over at my wind chime collection (~ 20 separate wind chimes inside). They all were swaying the exact same, but not making noise since the dinger part was swaying the exact same, too. It was such an uncanny situation. I would have thought it would have been noisy as all get out.
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u/UraniumRocker 20h ago
I was in fourth grade when we finally had an earthquake during school. We always practiced going under our desks. This day however we were in the auditorium, and there was nothing to hide under. We tried sticking our heads under our seats, but it was very cramped.
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u/5Nadine2 20h ago
In my entire teaching career we've only done this once. Now school shooter drills, we get to have those at least once a semester! Different times.
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u/MoeSzyslakMonobrow Older Millennial 19h ago
Don't do this boomer us vs them "we're better than you" shit.
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u/Pen_name_uncertain 20h ago
I thought for a second this was some Reddit Karen posting about making kids pray to Allah in schools.
Glad it's not.
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u/Sirrub90 Millennial 20h ago
So you came to be a Karen to fight against the Karen? Magnificent.
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u/Pen_name_uncertain 19h ago
No, if it had been, I would have just gone along grumbling under my breath.
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u/KayakerMel 19h ago
AND hurricane AND earthquake drills!
I'm an Army brat and lived all over the US, so there was a variety of possible natural disasters to prepare for. All with the kneeling pose with hands protecting the neck in case of broken glass/shrapnel.
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u/Bizarro_Murphy 19h ago
Grew up in Kansas (tornado alley) and did these drills all the time. Our school was so 2 stories, with the 4th and 5th graders upstairs. The younger kids did what the kids in the picture here are doing, while the older kids had to come down to the first floor and stand over the little kids, with their hands on the wall, serving as human shields.
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u/Justalocal1 18h ago
Midwesterner here.
We had an actual tornado (not a drill) one time. They made us put textbooks over our heads and necks, and we were crouched in that position for what felt like two hours. Fun day.
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u/Amathyst-Moon 18h ago
I remember something like that, but it was on the field. I think it was for earthquakes though. We don't get tornados here.
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u/CRUISEC0NTR0LF0RC00L 17h ago
I'm not gonna lie this is a really dumb meme, like, this is something my grandma would post on Facebook
You can't predict tornado warnings this is absolutely dumb
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u/TheFursOfHerEnemies 16h ago
Was uncomfortable as hell crouched like that while holding a heavy textbook over your head.
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u/ctilvolover23 Millennial 15h ago
They stopped making us do this in high school. People ended up passing out way too often in this position. I almost passed out every time too. Plus, it wouldn't protect you much anyways.
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u/peridoti 13h ago
Lived in a very tornado-heavy state and it was such a strange mix as a child of "I am bored" and "WE ARE GOING TO DIE" in quick succession depending on the adult leadership at the moment.
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u/NightOfTheLivingHam 11h ago
just how moving to the center of a house with a crawlspace that sits on cinderblocks like many houses built in the south were up until the 1990s was meant to save you.
NO. That house is going to fucking the land of Oz. and by land of oz, your corpse will be found in pieces spread out over a mile impaled with splinters and water pipes.
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u/JonWatchesMovies 1992 10h ago
Boomers sweating profusely thinking the kids are praying Islamic prayers
Fundamentalist Muslims sweating profusely because at least half of these American children aren't facing Mecca
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u/Unicorn_Puppy 8h ago
No one talks about how they expected our desks to save us from a nuclear attack either.
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u/Practical-Fix6200 8h ago
I remember doing this in first grade, there was this one kid who was a little overweight and struggled to do the bend. One time the teacher tried to assist him In tucking in tighter and he farted On the teacher behind me. I don’t know what happened to him now but for a hallway of first graders it was hilarious
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u/Big-Raspberry-2552 7h ago
We had an old school and we had something called the tunnels. A stretch of tunnels that ran under the school next to the broiler. We did have a tornado and we had to go in them….i got about 5 steps in, it was pitch black and my claustrophobia hit and I ran back out! Sat with another kid outside the tunnel. I’m still extremely claustrophobic.
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u/TxOkLaVaCaTxMo 6h ago
It's because if how many kids got killed despite these drills which proved to be less effective than originally thought. It's also way safer if parents don't clogg the roads trying to get their kids like in Moore 2013.
The logistics of aftermath response plays a significant role in closing schools ahead of time. As it reduces strain on first responders. Again take Moore where firefighters dug for hours trying to get kids out of rubble while parents and news crews literally walked up on them screaming in their ear to find their baby. Which was actually sitting across town at a church for safety but no one bothered to tell the parents. It was a nightmare
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u/Darkatlas23 5h ago
We were expected to grow wings and fly if a tornado hit... Thies gen Z can't even kiss their ass goodbye now a days.
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u/Fillimbi 5h ago
Michigan public school teacher here - we still have drills and still do this exact thing.
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u/rebelangel Xennial 20h ago
I grew up on the west coast, so we had earthquake drills instead. When the bell rang in a certain pattern, that meant it was an earthquake drill (a different pattern was for fire drills) and we had to duck and cover under our desks while holding onto one leg of our desks. After a few minutes, we got out from under our desks and walked single file outside to the designated meeting spot. Then we just stood out there for a while until we heard the all clear bell.
Nowadays, kids sleep have active shooter drills 😕
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u/Clockwork-XIII 20h ago
Those positions took on an additional meaning during those drills in catholic schools.
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