Just endured a Tornado Warning here at work. Everyone proceeded in a calm and orderly fashion into the basement of Walwood Hall and all in all we did quite well. The only thing I could really complain about was the stairs to access the area, for older folk with bad knees it’s definitely takes some time.

Once we were down in the basement technology shined. Everyone gathered around me and my iPad. I also had water, a fire extinguisher, and my Ready.gov emergency preparedness kit in a man-sized duffle bag. Several things I noticed were a lack of timely (where minutes count) updates from the National Weather Service, The Weather Channel app being sluggish to load and not having up-to-date data, again, in a timely fashion. I could access all the network resources I needed to, which was comforting. I have to find some source on Twitter that has as-close-to-realtime weather data as possible. For the entire event the only procedural problem was doubt surrounding the all-clear signal. Custodial Services delivered a premature all-clear that was in contradiction to the warning provided by the NWS. Which to follow? Who has authority? WMU really needs a centralized “GO” and “SAFE” system, what we have with the NWS is okay, but the confusion and doubt surrounding the “SAFE” declaration is rather upsetting.

Perhaps there is a technological solution, I’ll have to investigate. If anyone has any experiences, please feel free to comment and share them here. TIA!