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Tornado on the Road
The overpass myth, the ditch question, and your plan minute by minute.
It’s a Tuesday night in November, somewhere between Jackson and Birmingham. The wipers can’t keep up. You’re doing 55 on a highway you know well, the radio is playing something you don’t care about, and then every phone in the car makes the same harsh, buzzing sound at once. Tornado Warning. Take shelter now. You look up. There’s nothing out there but rain, dark fields and the red taillights ahead of you. So what do you do in a tornado in a car, right now, with no building in sight?
Most people have an answer ready. It came from a famous video, and it’s wrong.
I spent the last week reading what the National Weather Service, Ready.gov, the CDC and the Red Cross actually tell drivers, plus a long NWS study of people who sheltered under highway bridges. The official advice isn’t complicated. But it’s not what most of us picked up from TV, and the agencies don’t all say exactly the same thing. I’ll show you where they differ.
First, why this is a fall story and not only a spring one.
Why is fall a second tornado season in the South?
Most people picture tornadoes as an April thing in Kansas. The Gulf Coast states have a second act.
