So today it rained in Salt Lake City. And not just the normal, drizzly, spotty rain...but a real live thunderstorm. I'll admit that this is one of the things I miss the most about Kansas...a good old storm cloud rolling in once a week or so with thunder and lightning to boot!
As I've mentioned before, I can pretty much see the entire salt lake valley from my office window. Perfect locale for viewing storms when they occasionally come through. So today it was stormy out, and you could see there's some pretty intense rain and a little bit of lightning coming our way.
And here's where the craziness begins. I get a text message from the University of Utah saying the following: "Emergency alert from U Admin. Severe storm expected. U will not close. Take necessary precautions and find shelter."
(Sidenote: after the Virginia Tech shootings, the University of Utah, like most universities developed an extensive emergency alert system to communicate emergency instructions to students and faculty quickly when warranted).
OK, fine. A little overzealous, I think, for your standard severe thunderstorm, but we don't get these much around here so...OK. Then, the buzz around my office is that since it's a severe thunderstorm that means there's a tornado somewhere. Wow, I decide that someone logical definitely has to step in here. I put on my midwestern know-it-all hat and eduate them about the meterological warning system and how there's clearly not a tornado involved in this situation. Jeez.
Then, in the next 10 minutes I also get an e-mail, two voicemails and a message at my house about said severe thunderstorm from university administration. Lord. Calm down people.
The storm passes, we get a few wind gusts and it rains hard for maybe 10 minutes. No hail, very little lightning. Definitely no tornado.
Do you think they could save these emergency alerts for maybe, I don't know, A REAL EMERGENCY? Like an earthquake, a shooting, a campus wide gas leak....yeah, something like that. For god's sake it could snow 5 feet in two hours with traffic deadlocked all around the city and they wouldn't say a peep!
Regional differences. Gotta love them.
-Emily :)
3 comments:
the SAME ish goes down in la...they basically go into panic mode when it drizzles...watching the news is ALWAYS a hoot.
what's wrong with the folks out here girl?
Hilarious!! :)
That's the funniest story I've read in a while! I had a similar experience in New York. A bunch of us KU alums went to Yankee stadium for a KC-NYY baseball game. A storm was rolling in, with a hard line of dark bluish-black clouds and cool blustery winds. All around us, New Yorkers were panicking and packing up, positive a tornado was going to bear down on the Bronx any minute. We Jayhawks stayed put, kindly announcing to the New Yorkers that we were from Kansas, and that there was absolutely no need to panic about tornadoes until the sky turned green and the wind died down. The New Yorkers gave us strange looks and left anyway, and we stole their (much better) seats. At least until the game was called for rain.
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