Be Prepared For Bad Weather

One of the things I looked forward to when I moved to the East Coast was no more threats of tornadoes. Well, I learned pretty quickly that Maryland has tornadoes just like Minnesota! In Minnesota one of my first purchases was a Midland weather radio. Now that we're full on into tornado season, I reached out to Midland to see if I could do a review of their WR120. Thank my lucky stars they agreed!

I left mine in Minnesota honestly thinking I wouldn't need it here. I mean, if there's a hurricane, everyone's going to know about it, and I'm just going to drive to my mom's with plenty of time to spare. Finding out there were tornado warnings

When we lived in Washington, the girls had to put together a bad weather kit to bring to preschool and elementary school. It was in case an earthquake happened and they were stuck at the school for an extended period of time. I was shocked they didn't do the same in Minnesota for possible tornadoes.

I took this in the dark so you could see how bright the notification is.

So, I uproot the family and head to VA/MD and find out, SURPRISE! they have tornadoes, hurricanes, and have had the occasionally mild earthquake. What the...? And here I sat with nothing around the house to warn us in the middle of the night if something is heading our way. I also wasn't expecting to live close to the Bay and a hurricane would do some seriously mess with our home.

This bad boy will alert us anywhere in this house because the alarm is LOUD! lol The first night we had it plugged in, it went off downstairs at like 4am. Thankfully I figured out how to work that radio and we shouldn't be freaked out at 4am unless absolutely necessary! Let me just say, it's been moved to the bedroom so it can alert us and we can make decisions on what to do after the alert.

Now we have the new WR120 from Midland to help keep us alerted to any weather that would effect us and our home. It was extremely easy to set up.

What I like about weather radios is that you can pick the areas around you that you know you're close to, which is called Specific Area Message Encoding. You can pick up to 25 of those areas! I've usually picked the ones that surround out county. That way if something is possibly heading to our area, we'll know with plenty of notice.

I decided on the tone display at the lowed volume. I figured the voice might freak me out in the middle of the night and the display wouldn't wake me up even thought it's bright enough. Even at the lowest volume it's enough to wake us up in the middle of the night.

When we lived in Minnesota, we had a type of shelter in our house that was mostly surrounded with concrete and was under the stairs. We called it the cubby. If we heard the word "tornado" and it was anywhere near us, we'd head into the cubby and sit there until the weather had passed us. I always just kept a deck of cards down there and had them grab something from their room to pass the time.

Now I know it would've been better to have kit created for each kid so they could just have it in the cubby or safe place when the need arose. Every spring or late fall we ended up sitting down there for at least 15 minutes. I put together a couple of kits to give you ideas of what you could include:

Bad Weather Survival Kits For Kids

• Granola Bar
• Water Bottle
• Deck of Cards
• Travel Game
• Activity Book
• Crayons
• Rubik's Cube
• Sudoku (for mom or dad)

A great place to find some inexpensive books and games is at a dollar store or maybe even Goodwill! Super easy to keep the kids distracted, especially if you end up having to stay in your safe area for longer than expected.

I'm glad to have a weather radio again. I can't think of a home that couldn't put one to use, whether for a thunderstorm, tornado, or other bad weather that could effect your family.