So I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.. We had a rather loud visitor who stopped by for an hour or so. At around 3:30 AM a big thunderstorm came through our area. The lightning was some of the loudest I have heard in years. Amazingly, Ellie slept right through it all! This is especially amazing because just walking by her room is enough to wake her up sometimes. The storm gave us about an inch of rain in a short time, so it was really coming down. Thankfully it wasn’t as bad as it got a couple of weeks ago..

ISSUED BY ENVIRONMENT CANADA TORONTO
AT 10:05 PM EDT MONDAY 10 JULY 2006.

2:38 11 KILOMETERS PROBABLE TORNADO; PILOT
EAST SOUTH-EAST OF REPORTED FUNNEL TOUCHING
OWEN SOUND AIRPORT DOWN

2:58 WOODFORD FUNNEL CLOUDS SPOTTED HEADING
TOWARDS MEAFORD

This is where we live. In the past few weeks there have been quite a number of tornadoes touching down in Ontario with a few in our area (Owen Sound, Woodford, Meaford) and at least two people were killed by tornadoes in Ontario in the last week. Some of our camp staff actually saw the funnel clouds forming. Not something you want to see around your house (a prefab double-wide trailer!), especially when you have 140 campers and camp staff around too.

So last week I purchased a weather radio.

It is able to listen to Environment Canada’s weather radio service and let you know what is coming. More important than that, it has an alarm feature that will sound if there are any public warnings issued. It is programmed for our specific area so I don’t hear the alarm for other areas, and it is loud enough to wake you in the night if something is coming. So this will hopefully give us some warning and enable us to get ourselves and campers to shelter if needed.

The weather radio service has alarms for just about everything, from tornado warnings to flash floods to amber alerts (child abduction), to tsunami (not a problem where we live), to radiological hazzard, family reunion warning, blizzard warnings (definitely going to happen here), iceburg warnings (!), evacuation alerts… 75 alerts in all. It is really a comprehensive service.

Paranoid? Maybe. Common sense? Yes, I think so.