WELL, THE POWER’S OUT and we’ve just sat though another tornado warming in the basement. Fortunately, I still have power for the Internet courtesy of a big uninterruptible power supply. I also had multiple flashlights handy — and the power-off nightlights in the hall and on the stairs worked fine for initial lighting that made it easy to get ’em. The weather radio warned us of the tornado warning about 90 seconds before the EAS on the TV did, which is typical.

In short, all the prep worked fine. I just kinda wish I’d sprung for the whole-house generator now. . . .

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Weather radio is nice, and certainly better than nothing, but you seriously need to use www.Weathercall.net
As the Emergency Manager for my city, I can’t publicly endorse a product, but I actually use this product to trigger activation of the tornado sirens for my city.

I get a text message directly from the National Weather Service system when a warning is generated, and I get a phone call from Weathercall before the text message, and usually about 5 minutes before any EAS messages come out.

My wife’s hospital uses them, and our local water plant uses them as well.

For $9.95 a year, what more can you ask for? If the registered address is in the warning box, it will trigger calls to three phone numbers and emails to three email addresses.

Maybe I need it. Sigh.