As a girl who’s always lived in Missouri, tornado drills have always been a part of my life. I could tuck my head under a desk in my sleep (it’s the bus fire drills that always left me queasy). Having been in a couple of tornados, I can vouch for the ineffectiveness of the drills themselves. They’re pretty much a joke.
For starters, those hallways that we have in schools and those desks we have to cower under do not exist in real life! So forget curling up under/next to them during a real tornado. Secondly, there’s no teacher telling you what to do—and instead of some idiot hurling spitballs at you, there are crying toddlers scared of the storm. It’s a much more different environment than you might think! Here are a couple of places where we experienced real tornado warnings—I highly recommend practicing at any of them, as well as at home.
