There seem to be more alerts and warnings of every sort now than in the past.One can hardly get through a day without being sternly advised about some risk or other.
Thursday morning in the Washington,D.C. area was a case in point.Every five minutes,radio and television broadcasts were interrupted with tornado warnings,many of them redundant.Thunderstorms were under minute scrutiny for signs of rotation,and the least bit of it set off a hyperactive alert apparatus.By noon,you could have been excused for being a jangle of nerves.
Repeated alert sirens and loud taped warnings over a public address system in an outlying town gave a distinct impression of impending doom.In fact,not one tornado materialized there.If you had heeded the advice given,you would have sat in a windowless corner from 4:30 am to noon.
Try that on for cardiovascular or mental health.
The rotation detected in the storms was strictly in the upper levels.It was a potential for materializing,not an actual event.As well,one whole big county was lumped together,when the suspect rotation was confined to only portions of it.A high level of anxiety was produced in a region where killer tornadoes are almost never encountered,if ever encountered at all.Thankfully,the region carried on Thursday and the work of the nation proceeded.
Ironically,in areas typically hardest hit by severe storms,in the deep South and Midwest,they were perhaps not warned vigorously enough today.Hundreds died and more than a thousand were injured by tornadoes and straight line winds.
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