They have flooded major roadways like we have never seen before. For the past 3 weeks, the mid-day 30-minute thunderstorms have wreaked havoc in our community on a weekly basis. Recently the “normal” summer thunderstorms have not been so normal. Story submitted by Paul Falavolito, Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator at the Borough of White Oak Office of Emergency Management in Pennsylvania These stories will help you improve your overall severe weather preparedness, with tips and tools for you to implement on every page. You’ll hear about the challenges they’ve faced, the lessons they’ve learned, and how those lessons can help you prepare for the next weather disaster. Compiled here in this guide are their stories detailing how they prepare, take action, and manage severe weather emergencies like thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. how they handle severe weather before, during, and after it hits.

We asked real emergency managers from around the U.S. Recovery can span decades and, as these storms increase in frequency and severity, recovery efforts for the areas hardest hit are stalling. Samantha Max contributed to this reporting.SEVERE WEATHER DISASTER COSTS HAVE EXCEEDED $1.7 TRILLION OVER THE LAST 40 YEARS “But we feel a very deep calling, if you want to call it that, to help with this any way we can. “I don’t like these nights,” he said, sounding weary for perhaps the first time all night. Toward the end of the livestream, as the tornadoes moved further from Nashville, Leeper hinted at that. “All three of us have had moments of introspection, counseling - sessions where we talk amongst ourselves, sessions where we talk with professionals - about our feelings following a loss-of-life incident.” But in the days following … you start to hear some of those stories, and they do weigh on you,” he said. “When there is important work to be done, the three of us have the ability to set aside the emotional component and deliver more of a helpful, operational feel to what we do. As of Sunday night, the National Weather Service had confirmed seven tornadoes in Middle Tennessee.īut Minkoff said that being a part of storm coverage, as a kind of first responder, takes a mental toll. Ultimately, the worst of the storm hit elsewhere: It was neighboring Kentucky that suffered the most fatalities, and four people died in West Tennessee. Because while he is helping us, he’s taken a moment from saving our lives to make sure he takes care of his family,” she said. “So you guys just sit here with this radar while I go wake them up, and I’ll be right back,” he said, calmly, to the thousands of people viewing. This came into sharp focus when Leeper paused his commentary on the livestream to go wake up his family, as a potential tornado came closer to his house. “They are just people who happen to be really, really knowledgeable about things that most of us don’t understand,” she said. He has our hearts.”) But the Nashville Severe Weather partners are also especially relatable in their lack of fancy equipment or state-of-the-art studios. (“Lelan Statom comes into our living rooms. She loves some television meteorologists, she says. She pays attention in part because they’re primarily on Twitter, which makes the information easy for Hawkins to access on her phone. “He’s like, ‘Get your shoes, get into your safe place.’ And I mean, like a 5-year-old kid, I woke my husband up, we got our dog, and we went into the tiny little bathroom in my house. All right? You don’t have much time left.”Ī while later, as the storm front moved east, he gave the same directions to residents in Hermitage, where Hawkins lives. “If you’re in western Davidson County, you’ve got to enact your tornado plan now.

Listen to me,” he said at one point, while sitting alone in his home office. “What we really spend our time planning for is who’s going to get rest when,” he said.īut it was all-hands-on-deck for much of the night, as partner Andrew Leeper started up a livestream and the tornado warnings started rolling in. When storms are expected, the operation is a well-oiled machine, as partner Will Minkoff explained to WPLN News: One partner handles incoming reports and questions, another handles outgoing tweets, and the third runs the livestream video. On Saturday, tens of thousands watched the account’s YouTube livestream. They are not meteorologists - although they do partner with the National Weather Service to get information out to the public - but they’ve become a go-to resource for many during potential natural disasters. run by three men for whom weather is a passion but not a full-time job, has now been sharing tweet-sized weather updates for more than a decade. Saturday, she opened Twitter and started following along with an account that had kept her company during storms past. When Hermitage resident Vesia Hawkins woke up at 1:30 a.m.

Emergency weather meteorologist