Tornado checklist: What to do – and what myths to ignore

Here are six items severe-weather experts advise putting on your tornado-emergency checklist – along with four tornado-response myths to ignore.

Myth: This region of the country is dangerous, because tornadoes seem to drop out of the sky each spring and summer.

Fact: Although they can be highly destructive, tornadoes everywhere are extremely rare compared with other weather hazards a location can face, Carbin says. And they occur on small geographic scales. Even in Oklahoma or Nebraska, "you can go a lifetime without seeing a tornado," even if one struck a few miles away, he says. They may be more common in some parts of the country than others, "but the probability of an event in any one location is very small," he says.

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