Tornado Warning!

Now assuming for a moment that this was the STATE of Texas, and not the town, this would be a common occurence... However this is the Village of Tesas, a hamlet located in central Henry County of Ohio... In the early days of the Month of March... Needless to say I was more than a little surprised!
After a rainy day of railroad work I went home to finish washing my laundary, before heading to my parents' house in Napoleon to dry it. After my work uniforms had finished drying I spent easily half an hour idily chatting with my mother about movies before finally deciding to head home... Almost as I pulled out of the driveway I heard an odd wailing sound, which I first attributed to the poor condition of my car, before realizing that it was the all but forgotten sound of the air-raid sirens (and undoubtedly I am probaly the ONLY person in my age group that calls them that!)! Almost immeditely thereafter I reviefed a call from my mother, who informed me that there was a CONFIRMED tornado on the ground near Sherwood, OH....
I probably set a personal record for time getting home (normally if the sign says "speed limit 55 MPH" I drive at 54.9 MPH) I immediately sprinted to one neighbor's house, and then the other, to inform them of the threat and to invite them to my basement...
It is more than notworthy to say this: I am literally the ONLY owner of a real basement in this part of Texas, and that both of my neighbors live in converted house trailers. Needless to say I was more than a little concerned with their safety!
As soon as I had informed them I went into my house and fired up both the Media Center and my laptop. I immediately tuned the Media Centar into Channel 13 (which is host to both of the regions' most experianced meterologists, Stan Stacheck and Bill Spencer), and as soon as my laptop came up I went to the National Weather Service website. The latter took substansially longer than it should''ve. and by the time I got the dopplar radar readout up the supercell was direcltly over my house!!!!!!!!
At about that time my neighbors, the Cooks, walked up to make good on my invitation to use my basement. All but two immediately went down, the rest stayed outside with me as I carefully observed the clouds as I prepared to signal my other neighbors (whose name I can't remember) at the first sign of trouble...
Fortunately that sign never came. Though I observed several scuds (convective downdrafts) I couldn't sight either a wall cloud or funnel cloud as the storm passed overhead. As the storm finished it's passover the Cooks went home, and several minutes later two of the daughters of my other neighbor stopped over to ask me if I thought it was over. I explained to them my interpretation of the situation (that the storm in question had passed directly overhead, but was dying off), and shortly thereafter went home...

In retrospect I am glad both that my neighbors took my message seriously, and that my offer of shelter was totally unnesasary... With both luck and God's grace I hope I won't have to make that offer again...

(P.S. The picture posted at the head of this post is an actual photograph of the tornado that touched down near Sherwood, OH. The image is taken from the NOAA's National Weather Service.)