are useless if the expiration dates are 2003. Interesting weather in our neck of the woods today..it's improved alot since this morning. I believed the weather alerts and moved all the lawn & porch furniture into the barn, took down the flag, moved the flower pots and anything else that could "sail". When the sirens went off and the wind picked up and Cassie started to pace and pant, we went down into our spooky old basement.

As I sat there hand cranking that radio so I could listen to Diane Rheam instead of the wind and rain, I thought I should ck out all the supplies that Mr.Alffe had been storing down there for years...an impressive assembly!
First aid kits, flashlights, batteries, blankets, face masks, cases of bottled water, medicine, folding chairs, bathroom supplies...

And cans of food, cans of juice, tuna.....all expired years ago. Now that the storm has passed, I'll throw them out and replace them.

And I had to cancel that hair apt..

Heard from the relatives downstate..everyone fine but their porch chairs ended up in their neighbors back yard. Last I heard, one of my sil's was stuck in a plane, on the tamack in Indianapolis...trying to go to Chicago.

Abbie...everything ok by you???

Everything has been clear here since mid morning... we had the normal tornado and thunderstorm warnings... no damage done.

It is still very windy with gusts near 50mph.

I think we got off a lot easier than your neck of the woods.

ROFL! As soon as I saw the title to this thread, I knew who had posted it. We were 'messaging' when you said you had to run to the basement with Cassie and I wondered for quite some time if you had survived...until the next message that is, LOL!

Um...2003, yeah that sounds a bit old. My folks have a lot of canned goods, etc., in their basement. It got me to thinking about the winter about to overcome us. Gosh, I shudder to think of not having electricity during a snow storm most especially. Been there! Done that! It was awful! The kind of snow storms where you can't even get out of your house type of thing, blizzards.

So, thank you for this reminder. I need to stock up on some things as well.

My problem is if the heat goes out. I'm not quite sure what to do about that. And if the electric goes out too, well...no space heaters.

I remember one of our horrible blizzards that snowed us iin when Cara was younger. I had a waterbed at the time and that was a lifesaver!!! It was heated of course and kept us nice and warm.

Hmmm, well I guess I could use the stove to heat that part of the house.

Well anyway, let's just hope that doesn't happen!

Today started out with very high winds and lots of rain. The winds were awful! When I woke up I thought for sure my alarm was wrong and that it was 2 am. DARK! Stormy! Windy! Wow, it was hard not to call in sick to work and crawl back in bed!

I'm glad you guys are safe. Frank was talking about this as well over on FB.

Some of my TV channels come from Detroit... and I must admit I had to look up some of the county names to see where they were... what those winds can do is beyond my experience.

50 miles per hour winds work out to about 80+ kilometers per hour.

Hear on the west coast, we experience those winds too.. because we are aan ocean coast with mountains within a few miles to break some of the force.
The winds aren't as damaging as they can be to your area Alffe and Abbie. They certainly uproot trees, damage property and cut power/heat... but to have an emergency supply hasn't been high on my list - except perhaps for candles... matches and lighters. I think that might change...

I'm rambling...
and happy you're safe and sound with a husband who was prepared! WARM HUGS to you all!

I like the way you ramble..

I also love this...

Had to borrow it!

Alffe, when you were talking about what happened but didn't say what it was exactly i was sooo confused, thinking... is there a hurricane coming that i must've missed? Then I realized what you meant!

It's so interesting to me, when doody mentioned a blizzard, to think how different we all are in different parts of the country and world. Typhoons, lagoons, blizzards, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados, snowstorms.

For us with hurricanes, its much easier having somewhat advance notice, never any sirens. And instead of having expired emergency kits, we all rush out to the store the day before and buy everything they've got so the grocery stores are always depleted of food, the hardware stores have no more wood left, and then the next stop is the gas stations which then run out of gas.

I always love hearing about snow too, stuff about chains? shoveling? heat gas deliveries? Not too sure about any of that being in the sunshine state!!

LOL ((Wish)). Actually here in the cold parts, we all make last minute runs as well. You should see the grocery stores the minute the weather service says a snowstorm is a'comin. Good grief, people run to the stores and stock up like they may never see the outdoors again. But then when a blizzard is a'comin, you just never know! That's when I'm right there at the store as well making sure I have the essentials.

Midwest yesterday and today has had extremely high winds and storms. Around Chicago, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio I believe, there were also numerous tornadoes. They said the winds were so furious it was like a category 3 hurricane in the midwest.

For us 'old folks' maybe it's a hangover from when we were growing up fearing the atom bomb and everyone kept supplies stocked just in case. I'm not sure what 'just in case' as the atom bomb would have pretty much rendered the need for supplies useless, LOL!

I can't believe back then we would have regular tests at school in case of the bomb. They taught us to crawl under our desks and put our hands over our heads. Duck and Roll We also had the lovely Conelrad emergency broadcast system.

I'll bet Doody remembers color bars and test patterns on tv too. LOLOL
I do too, along with Conelrad warnings. My brother remembers the Duck and Cover drill, but by the time I was in school they must have figured out how stupid that was. LOL.
We had high winds here yesterday and a small tornado just north of us, but no one was hurt. We were lucky.
(ducky slips back into lurk mode, I think)

ROFL! Okay, so I'm old enough to remember the test patterns and color bars on all THREE stations we got back then. And lest you forget, the Oh Say Can you See playing before the test pattern and bars came on, LOL!

Yes, the duck and roll...geesh, they had to know that wasn't gonna do nuttin! And, scared the bewhoosits outta me and the other kids too.

I'm so glad you are okay Ducky!

Oh wait, look! All I had to do was say DUCK and you came!

I'm here a lot...I just couldn't pass up the chance to make you feel old ;-)