The middle of an emergency is perhaps not the best time to come up with an Emergency Response Plan

On Saturday Hugh called home from work and said that funnel clouds had been spotted in an area about an hour or so North of the city and was headed our way so could I please tie down our lawn furniture and do our general storm prep of the yard.  Big storms are not new experiences for us, neither are big winds as storms here often produce winds up to 100 km/hr.  We also get extreme storm watches on the Weather Network fairly often though we don't often get the full extent of the forecast.  Sure, I said, no problem.

Before heading to our back deck with the bungee cords we have on hand to keep our deck furniture together I decided to check the Weather Network online to see what it said. It did not say we had a severe thunderstorm warning.  It did not say we had a tornado watch.  In big red letters it said we had a tornado warning for our city and to also expect golf-ball sized hail with the storm.  Underneath that, also in big red letters, was an advisory about putting your family emergency preparedness plan in place.  Uh. Come again?  You said a what now?

That's when I started panicking.

I ran out to our back deck to secure our patio table and chairs together.
Then I saw our Adirondack chairs so I started to run down the stairs towards the lawn thinking I'd better put them under the deck.
Then I remembered about my pots of herbs up on the deck so I did an about-face and ran back up the stairs to get them and take them inside.
When I picked up a pot I saw our trampoline - which had already been tossed by the wind across the yard once this year - so I put the pots down, turned and ran back towards the stairs thinking I better wedge the trampoline in deeper.
Just as I got to the stairs I remembered I had originally come out to bungee our patio chairs to the table so I came to a dead stop and turned again to look for the bungee cords. 

All through this back and forth across my deck I was thinking about the fact that Hugh was at work and that we would be separated when the funnel cloud hit and how was I going to keep the kids calm and were we supposed to sit in the bathtub or in a doorway or was that just for earthquakes and if the power goes out I can use the candles around my tub and should I fill our tub with water?  I don't have emergency water.  I don't have emergency rations.  I'm completely out of rice!  It's on my list for my next Costco run and what am I going to do with the food in our freezer if the power goes out? And how am I going to keep the kids calm?  And isn't there something about hiding near a west wall?  Where is my west wall?  Which way is west???

In the midst of my mental anguish I noticed my neighbour calmly chatting to a friend while grilling chicken on his deck so I yelled over the fence, "Did you hear about the tornado warning?  We're going to have to tie everything down, batten down the hatches, bunker in!

My neighbour and his friend - who turned out to be his step-dad - had both been bush pilots for many years in the Yukon and Northwest Territories.  They had both looked at the system coming in and felt very confident that despite the Weather Network's advisory to put our emergency response plans in place the whole storm was going to miss us completely (which it did).  "But don't worry," our neighbour said.  "If it changes and does come our way I'll give you an hours warning so you can still run around on your deck."