Lessons learned from a tornado warning
Earlier this evening I was able to share an unexpected and rather unusual event with my kids: a tornado warning for Davis and southern Weber counties.
Cade came over to report that Shauna & Becca were on their way home from the activity they were attending at Church (which was ending early because of the National Weather Services tornado warning). Meghan, who likes to feel like she is in control, began to panic at the thought that a tornado might hit our house. I told Meghan that the safest place to be in our house would be downstairs in the basement.
Quickly as Meghan began crying hysterically Caleb began to be very afraid. We had been playing WoW together and he didn't even want me to take the time to logout properly. (Wise, but at this point I doubted very much we were in any real danger. I can only recall one tornado ever touching down along the Wasatch Front in my lifetime.)
Jacob didn't mind tagging along as we went downstairs, but Andrew didn't grasp why Meghan was wrenching him away from watching his favorite Scooby Doo video.
When we got to the basement I tried to get Meghan and Caleb to calm down enough so we could talk about the situation, and so they could articulate their fears, which I hoped to be able to calm by teaching them (at one point Meghan sobbed, "what is a tornado anyway? Is it like in movies?").
Caleb gained enough composure to be able to blurt out, "Daddy, let's say a prayer." That touched me profoundly.
After the three of us had each taken turns offering a prayer (and I don't think I've ever heard Caleb pray so fervently), I was able to get them to explain why they were so scared. Meghan said she "didn't want to die" and Caleb said he was "too young to die." Can't disagree with that sentiment!
In The Wizard of Oz Dorothy doesn't die. I told them that in the last hundred years, in Utah, I didn't recall that anyone had ever been killed by a tornado. We talked about the weather and about what meteorologists do. They understood temperature, precipitation, and wind speed, but I had a harder time explaining humidity and barometric pressure.
Next I helped them employ some basic mathematical reasoning to see that the odds of a tornado hitting our house were quite low. If there are, say, 10 cities & towns in Davis County that might experience a tornado, if (hypothetically) there was one, what's the chance that Layton would be the city hit? Quick answer: 1 in 10.
Next, consider the size of Layton. In our immediate neighborhood (phase I of our subdivision, 2 streets by 3 streets) there are roughly 150 homes. Consider how many other homes there are in Layton. Even if a tornado did hit Layton, and if it managed to avoid the large swaths of farm & other undeveloped land, what would the odds of our house being hit be? I don't know precisely how many homes there are in Layton, but I figure Meghan was probably in the ball park with "more than 1 in 1,000."
Once Shauna made it home safe from her meeting everyone was a lot happier. We all stayed in the basement for another hour and a half reading stories outloud to each other. Eventually we got a phone call from a neighbor letting us know that the tornado warning had been lifted, although the severe storm warning was still in effect.
Caleb told me he was sure glad that this had happened when his Dad (me) was at home. More than anything else they wanted our family to be together and to be safe. Meghan had left her scooter at a friends house this afternoon. She said she didn't mind if one of her favorite toys got blown away, what was important was being with her family.
Teaching moments of faith, natural science, and mathematics. I never would have guessed how interesting tonight would turn out when I got home from work today.
—Michael A. Cleverly
Tuesday, August 02, 2005 at 23:23