Northern Illinois PDS Tornado

My area is currently under a PDS Tornado Warning with a confirmed large tornado on the ground. It seems to be on a crash course with my area.

I know firealarmgeek lives in the area so I hope you and anyone else who may live around northern IL are doing alright.

I’ll post more updates, hopefully with good news but if not I’ll be sure to update on that as well.
Wish us luck. :frowning:

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Good luck. Let us know how it ends up.

Be Safe and Good Luck!

God be with you!

Tornado is currently within 5 minutes of my town projected at 8:38 PM CST.

You guys are acting like you’re new to tornado ally. :lol:

Occasionally sirens go off and you go in your basement, but realistically there’s a very slim chance you’ll ever deal with a tornado. I’ve seen the aftermath plenty of times but I’ve also been under hundreds of tornado warnings that never amounted to anything and a few sirens every year that never amount to anything.

It’s just not something worth worrying about. It’ll take years off of your life if you spend your time watching weather reports.

This was slightly different. My home is fine but from what I understand the tornado passed about 3 miles to the northwest of my house and is predicted to be an EF3 (strong). Just a bit too close for comfort to not be concerned about.

Agreed. Thats a bit too close for comfort.

Glad you made it through okay. Anything like that within 10 miles is too close for comfort as far as I’m concerned!

Made me think of the time a tornado almost touched down about 2 or 3 miles from my house about five years ago. There was a large funnel cloud that I could actually see from my front yard, but thankfully it never touched down and never came any closer to my house. I live in what is loosely considered New England’s “tornado alley”. We get many more events like that per square mile than most other parts of the northeast.

The National Weather Service ended up classifying it as an EF4 (violent). Some towns about 15 miles from me were hit really hard or wiped clean but the storm had fizzled out as it neared Lake Michigan and my home. It ended up being on the ground for nearly 2 hours!

Unfortunately three deaths have been reported from this specific tornado in a town ~15 miles from me.

Here’s a picture of the tornado at its peak in Rochelle, IL which is to my southwest (not my picture, credit to CBS-Chicago).

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There’s nothing you can do about those, except go in your basement when the sirens go off. That’s why there’s no point in worrying, it’s something completely random and completely out of your control.

If there’s a hurricane warning, you can board up your house and head inland to safety. With tornado’s in the area what are you going to do?

that’s a fantastic photo btw.

I think it has been leveled up to an EF-4 since yesterday. Here is an interesting picture I found, where you can clearly see the path it took, and where the circulation was:

Our sirens actually failed to operate so we and everyone else in town received a call from the Police Department, which is strange because they worked two days earlier on the Tuesday when they test them every month.

odd, our police department doesn’t have my phone number.

cell phones get those emergency weather notifications pushed to them now though.

It was only our land-line phone so I suppose that information could be obtained from some records somewhere in an emergency. It is also helpful in this case that our town is a smaller suburb.

It seems that sirens have fallen somewhat obsolete anyways, since nowadays they are used to prompt you to check the news and media for information which is always available anyways. Although, it still is a lifesaver for the uninformed, those outdoors, or those who rely solely on the siren for warning.

I’ve never had a landline in my entire adult life though, as I’m guessing many younger people don’t anymore. :stuck_out_tongue:

still, everything gets pushed to my cell phone depending on what tower it’s pinging. i’m surprised you didn’t get anything like that. it’s a loud annoying buzz (even if it’s on silent) and a message saying flood warning, tornado warning, amber alert, etc… pretty cool feature i didn’t know existed until i started getting amber alerts one day.

lots of weather apps on cell phones have their own emergency warnings too.

it’s surprising the sirens passed the test and failed when actually needed. go figure.

A lot of towns are capable of doing “reverse 911” calls. I’m not really sure how all of that works, but I would assume maybe the town or police department just automatically sends a message out to any number that matches the town’s number code. For example, if a phone number was (555)-777-8822, they could send the automated number to all local numbers that include the 555-777 part of the number. Again, I’m no expert on phone systems or anything, but just a guess as to how its done if they don’t have people’s actual numbers.