Carbon Monoxide Detectors and Tornado Radios

Several years a go there was a story on the news about carbon monoxide detectors and how they could save your life. Well I bought one because I do what I’m told and plugged it in.

Late one night in the middle of cold winter the thing goes off. We exit the house and call the fire department because that’s what the instructions said to do. I’m sitting in the drive way in our car with my daughter wrapped in a blanket while the firemen go through the house with some technical equipment.

After several minutes the fireman tells us the house is clear and the detector must have malfunctioned. So the next day I uplug the damn thing and put it in the hall cupboard where all the broke things go.

Fast forward to a few years a go after a major tornado took out a whole town. The meteorologists are all advertising these weather radios that can save our lives in the middle of the night when we are fast asleep and don’t realize a big one is on it’s way. So once again I go to the store and buy one. I swear if the news reporter advertised metal detectors and told me how important they were I would be in line at Walmart.

I brought it home and plugged it in by my bed so I wouldn’t miss a thing.

The thing was annoying. This Speak and Spell voice was constantly going off in the middle of the night waking me up telling me about stuff that was miles away and didn’t pertain to our area. I changed the settings so it would only tell me about my county, but it still went off about every little thing.

Finally, I moved him to the kitchen, but of course I had to have the volume up so I could hear it in the bedroom because what good would it do to have it if I can’t hear it. Right?

I finally turned the sound all the way down so I wouldn’t have to listen to him. So the other night we have tornadoes west of us in tornado alley. It really shouldn’t be legal to sell land in that path. My daughter asked me if we should turn it up so we could hear if a storm comes. Yeah, I guess we should.

It’s times like this I’d like to live somewhere else. Why do storms always have to come in the middle of the night. Tornadoes should sleep like everybody else.

In answer to Deanna Banana's question in her blog about tornadoes and trailer homes. There is a theory that they are attracted to metal. Something to do with conducting electricity. For some reason they don't go to cities that have a lot of concrete buildings.