Severe Weather Awareness Week: Tornado safety

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Severe Weather Awareness Week continues Tuesday with the topic of tornado safety.

Nebraska’s statewide tornado drill will happen at 10 a.m. Wednesday, March 26th, 2025.

But now is the time to go over with family and co-workers what to do in the event of a Tornado Warning for your area – day or night.

Outdoor sirens can be heard in the event of a tornado, but there’s important limitations to these sirens: They’re really only good when you are outdoors, and they can sound for different reasons.

You should have multiple ways to get weather alerts, including:

• NOAA weather radio
• Channel 8 Storm Alert Team
• Radio
• Friends and family
• Apps on your phone (radar, mobile NWS, etc.)
• Wireless emergency alerts

Tornado safety drills at school and work are a great idea now, knowing where to shelter when a tornado – or conditions supporting the development of a tornado – is imminent.

Putting the most interior walls between you and the outside of the house is important, as well as moving away from doors and windows. If you can, move to the lowest level of the building when seeking shelter.

This is also a good time to think about where you would go at various locations. The obvious locales are school, home and work. What about the mall? What about at your kid’s soccer practice? What about if you are in a parking lot? What if you are at a baseball game, at a golf course, or on a lake? Check out this website to learn more about where you should go in the event a Tornado Warning is issued.

Things to discuss:

• What county do we live in?
• Where should we shelter during the warning?
• What supplies should we have in the shelter?
• Where is the gas shutoff in the event you need to turn it off?
• Where should we meet after the storm in the event a tornado hits?

Be sure to go over these things with children so you can help alleviate fear. The before, during and after are all be important stages of tornado safety:

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is very true when it comes to severe weather preparedness. Plus, taking a few minutes to talk about it now can make the situation MUCH less stressful when you need to act.

There are several locations where you should NOT shelter during a tornado or severe weather. Cars offer little protection and can easily get swept away; instead, ditch it and head for a ravine or a lower-lying area away from overpasses.

Tornadoes can happen at any hour of the day, but in Nebraska, they’re more frequently observed in the late afternoon and early evening.

You may remember how active April of 2024 was. The state of Nebraska last year had 101 tornadoes, the third-most behind 1999 and 2004 (the only three years to ever see 100+ tornadoes).

TORNADOES ARE RATED BASED ON DAMAGE

We’re coming up on a year since the Arbor Day Outbreak across eastern Nebraska, when an EF-3 tornado ripped through a business on the northeast side of town near Waverly.

Tornadoes are ranked after the National Weather Service surveys the damage done by a tornado. The “Enhanced Fujita scale” is used to assign a tornado a rating based on related damage and then estimated wind speeds.

The EF scale became operational by 2007, taking into account more variables such as ‘damage indicators’ than the original “F scale”. The EF scale is a modified version of that original Fujita scale created by Dr. Tetsuya Theodore Fujita in 1971.

The video below is a great way to see the difference in damage with each rating, from an EF-0 to and EF-5.

Sometimes if there isn’t enough information with a tornado or damage wasn’t done, an “EF-U” rating is assigned, also known as EF-Uknown.

Be sure to have a plan – at work, at home at school – if and when a Tornado Warning were to be issued where you happen to be.

Meteorologist Jessica Blum 
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