When the sirens go off, we don’t give AF. Nothing enters the city.
When I moved here, I remember working on a highrise in the loop when all these air raid sirens went off. I looked around and no one seemed to even acknowledge it. I said “is anyone… Hearing this? Shouldn’t we like… Do something?” And then someone said “oh yea those just do that. First Tuesday of the month or when there’s a tornado that we also don’t care about.”
Chicago is called the Windy City because a lot of square architecture has led to wind tunnels, but they also serve as an extra purpose of breaking up big winds and not allowing room for tornadoes to bloom.
In fact, many tornados also don’t occur towards the south suburbs sometimes because Chicago just blocks all the lake Michigan wind.
When I lived with my parents, their house was on the outer edge of a microburst. It was so cool watching the wild wind. We just stood on the sheltered porch like dumbasses, watching it all in awe. It’s by far one of the coolest weather things I’ve ever seen. We had no idea it was a microburst. We just thought it was crazy wind. After everything calmed down, we drove around and found that the next town over was absolutely demolished and the beginning of my parents’ neighborhood had bad damage. That’s when we realized how dumb we were just hanging out outside during the storm. My parents’ house was totally fine btw, aside from the trashcans getting blown away.
My favorite experience along these lines was watching a whole car dealership worth of sales drones with their nose all but up against the massive plate glass wall looking at the green sky.
As a siren enthusiast, I know several other enthusiasts who have deliberately gone out during tornado warnings to go film the sirens. I can’t imagine going out in such high winds and rain to do that, but some people are really, really dedicated. I prefer waiting for the weekly/monthly tests.
Point a camera with a good mic at it, and bam. And yes, you certainly can get audio recordings. Many enthusiasts will set down an audio recorder near a group of sirens in order to get ambience recordings of the system, along with filming a specific siren during a test.
Ah yes, the good ol’ Chicago Modulators. Sadly they don’t use that creepy “alternate wail” signal anymore. They just use the regular “wail” signal which isn’t as haunting.
Okay but thats what a lot of people do. American or not. Honestly if I see one I wanna watch it a bit too. ts fascinating. Though of course I would run to the cellar if it comes for me
I live in Southern California, and we were having crazy weather for the region. I think Hawaii had a hurricane or something iirc, and we were getting the tail end of it.
I was at work, and suddenly everyone phone started screeching alerts.
⚠️ Tornado Warning ⚠️
Everyone froze for a couple seconds, then crowded the floor to ceiling office windows, then ran down stairs to go outside for a better look.
We all laughed at how incredibly stupid we were being, but hell, a Tornado in Cali was too rare to miss.
I used to live in Wisconsin. I remember a tornado warning and people, including me, were standing in the intersections and streets to get a better view. I had spotted something odd in the clouds and to this day swear I saw a tornado second guess itself. I heard the next day that one had touched down a few miles North in a field.
“Why were you running back to the house last night? haha”
had one go through my town about 2 blocks from work.
They thought it was over and gave the “all clear” so I was going between buildings starting equipment back up and I looked at the sky and the clouds were going 2 different directions at about 100 mph. went inside and saw the debris cloud out the window and thought: “yeah it’s time to get in the shelter now”
the track was also about 1 1/2 blocks from my house. I lost about 10 shingles off my roof. down the street, the neighbor had the whole roof peeled off his house like the lid of a tin can.
they really do sound like a freight train rumbling down the track.
also it sucked a bunch of air out of the building so that all the closed doors made a howling noise.
I lived through Hurricane Hugo. Before it came about, most people didn't worry about tornadoes much in my area when there was a watch. More people took warnings seriously but a significant amount of people would "know the signs" and go about their day anyway. Hugo hit and devastated everything. Trees through houses and everything. It is hard to describe in a small sentence how much the wooded landscape changed for over a decade but it was common for trees to just be laying down everywhere in the woods. It was now common trails were cut through swathes of logs.
For a time after people would take tornadoes seriously again. Slowly but surely though, you'd see that neighbor that never mows their lawn think the best time to finally do it is when there's a tornado that touched down near just to show they can defy it. Driving during warnings is one of the worst things you can do because the roads are static and traffic won't just abide for only you. The road doesn't just stay clear of obstructions from trees, powerline poles, fences, etc. You can very easily become trapped very quickly.
I think like anything else when people deal with tornadoes regularly, they become complacent. People think about them like they can just see them a bit off and have time but tornadoes will hop around or form just wherever very quickly. Some people's attitudes become "this happens every year and I survive around 15 tornadoes a year and it doesn't really effect me much personally, so it's no big deal really. You just have to know what you're doing." when it was just luck all along.
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