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Out our way, tornadoes are a very spur of the moment event. I never heard a weather forecaster saying, "There will be a tornado at 3:15 PM".
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No they may not put a time, but your sarcasm is noted.
That being said, there have been a few tornados where I have lived in Ohio. Every single time there was a storm. It didn't go from bright and sunny to tornado in 5 seconds. They also ring the tornado sirens when tornados are near.
Also I have never lost power in the 22 years I lived in Ohio and there where times when it was 36 below with a windchill.
Chances are if you live in an area that experiences this type of weather regularly you know exactly what to do.
No they may not put a time, but your sarcasm is noted.
That being said, there have been a few tornados where I have lived in Ohio. Every single time there was a storm. It didn't go from bright and sunny to tornado in 5 seconds. They also ring the tornado sirens when tornados are near.
Also I have never lost power in the 22 years I lived in Ohio and there where times when it was 36 below with a windchill.
Chances are if you live in an area that experiences this type of weather regularly you know exactly what to do.
The sarcasm is born of frustration that you would think that everything is predictable, and you have an answer to everything. There are no emergencies in your world. We live in an area that gets tornadoes. Did my kids know what to do? Well, yes, but I'd still have been happy if someone checked on them after the tornado ended, had I not been at home. And it CAN go from bright and sunny to tornado in the space of 30 minutes or so. Tornadoes are also very local.
Big whoop that you've never lost power. We lose power frequently.
to momma bear: there's a difference between "I don't know whether or not I can trust my neighbors" and "I don't think I can trust my neighbors."
Yeah-but you wrote that you HAVE to trust them or else you should raise your kids elsewhere. My answer is NO you don't. Sometimes you don't know your neighbors. Other times your neighbors cannot be trusted. When my neighbors become my friends then I would not mind them checking on my kids. When they are simply people who happen to live in the same neighborhood then no.
Where we live, any weather that would knock out cell phone service is known about ahead of time, so we would already have plans in place. What could happen so quickly in other areas that you are caught completely off guard?
Where I live, flash floods, microbursts, blizzards, freezing rain, lightening, etc. Even though blizzards are usually forecast ahead of time, they do happen without warning too. I'd say freezing rain is our most common problem. It can happen a few days a week sometimes throughout the winter. Whenever the temperature is hovering around 32 degrees, we're bound to have freezing rain since it rains often in our region. Freezing rain downs power lines, children can fall in the yard while taking the dogs out, etc.
When I was a teen one year, we got stuck at school due to a blizzard. Many bussses didn't show up. At 6pm, we convinced a bus to take us but the driver said she could only drop us off 3 miles from our neighborhood. When the bus passed an elementary school, the students were all looking out the windows. School schedules in my area have older students getting out earlier and younger students later (to protect young students from being at the bus stop in the early morning when the weather is coldest). Many high school students had to spend the night in the cafeteria. Middle school and elementary school students didn't make it home at all. Those of us who took the bus walked 3 miles to get home. We didn't get home until 9pm and school let out at 2pm.
Edited to add: I want to elaborate. Your living in North Carolina is the reason you have advanced warning. You get warning about blizzards and hurricanes. Where I live, we don't get much warning for winter weather because winter weather is NORMAL here. We dont' close down the city like southern states do when it snows. We're out there in the snow, commuting to and from work and school, when it snows.
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Originally Posted by ohiogirl22
Also, while living in Ohio I lived in the snow belt. Phone lines are sometimes placed underground to prevent outages from snow.
Since Ohio is so flat, snow storms aren't a big deal there compared to extremely hilly regions of the country, like where I live. None of our power lines or phone lines are underground. My childhood neighborhood was developed with power lines underground, but eventually telephone poles were installed because its' too expensive to maintain powerlines underground---especially in an region of the country that gets lots of rain, like where I live. Inland flooding doesn't work well with underground power lines either.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiana
Emergencies are just that, emergencies. The power can go out when it's 10 below 0. Power outages are usually very local. Mom and Dad may be working some miles away where there is no problem.
It can be extremely local. Sometimes our street is the only one in the neighborhood to lose power.
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Originally Posted by Katiana
Other, unpredicatable things can happen. You guys who know your cell phone service will go out at a certain time are lucky.
After experiencing two natural disaster flash floods in my life, I know full well that a family can't prepare enough---especially in areas that don't commonly have natural disasters. It's impossible for children to be fully prepared. Afterall, they are children.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ohiogirl22
That being said, there have been a few tornados where I have lived in Ohio. Every single time there was a storm. It didn't go from bright and sunny to tornado in 5 seconds. They also ring the tornado sirens when tornados are near.
As for storms, we have storms almost everyday where I live. Ask Katiana. She grew up in my region before moving to Colorado. When you live in an area that commonly has rain, a storm isn't a big deal. You never know which one will have the high winds. Tornados are uncommon where I live, but we get microbursts and they do significant damage. And microbursts can occur without any rain or storm whatsoever. There are wet microbursts and dry microbursts. In my opinion, microbursts are more frightening than tornados because they are more unpredicable, have zero warning time, and come and go quickly---sometimes within seconds. btw, we don't have tornado sirens.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ohiogirl22
Also I have never lost power in the 22 years I lived in Ohio and there where times when it was 36 below with a windchill.
Good for you. We lose power a few times every year, mostly in the summer. I'm most concerned with when we love power in the winter because it can take days to get it back in the winter. Summer you can suffer. Winter you can die.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ohiogirl
Chances are if you live in an area that experiences this type of weather regularly you know exactly what to do.
That's the point. Most of us live in areas that don't have this type of weather regularly, but our areas do get this weather sometimes. Blizzards occur in my area about once every 10 years. Some neighborhoods flood yearly. Big flash floods that flood the entire region occur about every 10 years, but sometimes we'll get two or three in one year. Microbursts are relatively new to our area. The first I experienced was about 13 year ago. They're very unpredictable. We can go a few years without them and then we can have a few in one year.
That last big flash flood we had, my husband and I didn't get home until late at night. I got home around midnight and my husband didn't get home until 4am. It took us that long to navigate our way through the flood damage to reach our house. Our children got home from school at 2pm. If it weren't for the neighbors, our children would have been totally on their own until midnight. They were old enough to be home for an hour or two during daylight, but they were not old enough to be alone for eternity.
If I couldn't reach my own children, there's no way an emergency contact who lived across town would have reached them. Last winter, we had a blizzard and ambulances and fire departments couldn't reach people. I'm glad I have nurses, paramedics, firemen, plumbers, electricians, etc. for neighbors. There's something to be said for living in a middle class neighborhood. Collectively, we have the skills and capability of digging in and taking care of our neighborhood on our own when services can't reach us. (One time, one of our neighbors climbed the telephone pole and restored electricity for the neighborhood on his own! LOL) My children always knew what each of our neighbors did for a living and knew the appropriate neighbor to get for each problem.
Neighbors are important. I feel sorry for people, like Momma Bear, who don't get to know their neighbors. Whenever I moved to a new neighborhood, I always got to know my neighbors right away. I can't understand how someone could live in a neighborhood for a year and not know their neighbors.
I think it is important to get to know your neighbors, at least by sight. You don't have to like them all, or socialize with them. If you have kids, chances are at some point you are going to need some help from a neighbor. If you are going to leave kids home alone (after the legal age for doing so), especially before they can drive, it's good for them to have someone they can go to in an emergency, which does not have to be weather related. In these days of cell phones, it's certainly easier to get hold of the parents, but parents have meetings, etc when the cell phone must be turned off. In my work in patient care, I can't answer the cell when I'm weighing a baby, or giving shots. Most of us in our office keep our phones at the desk, where we go between patients.
Neighbors are important. I feel sorry for people, like Momma Bear, who don't get to know their neighbors. Whenever I moved to a new neighborhood, I always got to know my neighbors right away. I can't understand how someone could live in a neighborhood for a year and not know their neighbors.
I feel sorry for people who make assumptions about people they don't even know.
I feel sorry for people who make assumptions about people they don't even know.
Well, I'm not lacking a connection with my neighbors as a result of making an assumption over the internet! LOL
You've made it very clear that you wouldn't even like neighbors you know and trust 'snooping around' and 'confusing' your children without you asking them. That's a pretty standoff-ish mentality in my area of the country, and based on other posts in this thread it's not the norm for most areas of the country. In my experience, people aren't snoops by nature. Sounds like you don't easily trust people.
Yeah-but you wrote that you HAVE to trust them or else you should raise your kids elsewhere. My answer is NO you don't. Sometimes you don't know your neighbors. Other times your neighbors cannot be trusted. When my neighbors become my friends then I would not mind them checking on my kids. When they are simply people who happen to live in the same neighborhood then no.
No, that isn't what I wrote. This is what I wrote:
Quote:
As for not trusting your immediate neighbors - if you feel you can't trust them, then you have no business raising kids near them. Your kids WILL get out of the house and roam the neighborhood at one point or another. You'd better be able to trust your neighbors or you'll be in for a world of trouble.
There are two related, but seperate thoughts here:
1. IF YOU CANNOT trust your neighbors, then you shouldn't be raising your kids near them. Meaning - if you have a very decisive, specific lack of trust. Not if you don't know them. But if you know them, and have concluded that they're not trustworthy.
2. You should trust your neighbors, OR expect problems. Meaning, if your neighbors have proven themselves untrustworthy, and you have children, you should expect problems and not be surprised if you encounter trouble.
I'm pretty confused as to why I had to explain this further. My wording was pretty precise, and pretty clear.
Well, I'm not lacking a connection with my neighbors as a result of making an assumption over the internet! LOL
You've made it very clear that you wouldn't even like neighbors you know and trust 'snooping around' and 'confusing' your children without you asking them. That's a pretty standoff-ish mentality in my area of the country, and based on other posts in this thread it's not the norm for most areas of the country. In my experience, people aren't snoops by nature. Sounds like you don't easily trust people.
Sounds like you don't know what you are talking about. I have not been living here for very long (much less than a year).
I am not standoffish but I do wait until I actually get to know someone to make judgments about them. Just because they live on my block and I said hello to them a few times that doesn't mean it's a good idea for my kids to allow them in the house when I am not there.
We had a housewarming party on Halloween and invited all of the neighbors. Only a few bothered to show up. The families from the neighborhood that did show up seemed quite nice but you really don't get to know someone by meeting them at a party for a few hours.
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