You've likely heard those words from excited storm chasers when the news, as it tends to do, broadcasts video of tornadoes touching down.

When I lived in Oklahoma City several years ago, I remember on many evenings grabbing my family and our dog and jumping into the bath tub, or a hall closet, when it flashed on the t-v screen that a tornado was on the ground.

Those words should grab you when you think about the power and the somewhat suddeness of these storms.

I can remember one night a tornado hitting the t-v station where I worked.

We lost electrical power, but we kept broadcasting on battery power, thinking we may have been the only informaiton some people were getting on the track of the storm as it moved across the state.

Having been through a number of tornadoes, it's even harder for me to believe that no one was killed this week in the storms that hit Suffolk.

Maybe it was the time of day. Four o'clock in the afternoon when many people might still have been at work. Perhaps it was fact people took the warnings seriously, or neighbors were looking out for neighbors. That would be great!

We're about to head into the severe weather season and we need to be reminided again to take weather warnings seriously.

Will there be times when the storms fizzle out before they hit our neighborhoods? Yes. Will there be times when the warnings seem extreme? Perhaps.

We all need to take the warnings seriously. Sometimes we don't get a second chance to second guess them.

Have a plan. Practice the plan as silly as it may feel.

I remember one night in Oklahoma City climbing out of the closet in the calm after the storm to see if the approaching tornado had hit out house, or our neighborhood.

As I opened the front door,all I could smell was lumber from the trees that had snapped and the roofs that had been ripped off.

That night we were essentially one of those homes that was spared. Not far from us was some of the devestation we've seen this week in Suffolk.

An experience like that you never forget.

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