No Warning the same as a Warning

The title sounds sort of cryptic, doesn't it?

Well, it's ... VENTING time again.

Actually, it could have serious repercussions to not only my family but any family in my local community.

We rely on information to keep us safe, to educate us so that we can make informed decisions and we assume that warnings will come in time.

Not so.

We were under the threat of possible severe weather yesterday; "Eye to the Sky" and all that.
The storms came as predicted late in the afternoon and with my slow dial-up, I diligently kept refreshing the map showing a line of storms heading our way.

The problem is that storms can form and move faster than my computer. That I expected.

What I didn't expect was the ten minute delay from my local news channel. On the map on my computer I could see a splotch of red suddenly appear near us. It happened within a five minute interval. The lightening was dropping fast and furious, the rain gushed from a sky as dark as pitch while the house reverberated with booms of thunder.

After ten minutes of this natural bombardment, the news station started flashing the Severe Thunderstorm Warning AFTER we'd already been under the gun for more than ten minutes. The community targets listed were after us.

You see, no warning WAS the same as a warning because it came too late! What good would it have done us if the activity was tornadic in nature?

By that time, it would have been over and done with none of us having taken precautions. We'd never have known what hit us. Well, I guess we would as our world got torn apart.

I admit that the realization that we were and are quite alone and out of the timely warning loop daunts me, scares me.

What can a regular, non-meteorologically savvy person do to better the odds??

Because I sure as heck didn't enjoy the epiphany I had. That we are vulnerable by the very complacency we enjoy because we think we have all the info we need at our fingertips.

Sometimes, it's just not enough.