Sunday, December 27, 2015

Just in time...

So, we came back from our Christmas trip just in time to hunker down through an evening of tornado warnings. We're safe, but the last count I saw said there something like eight tornadoes and at least eleven deaths. There are also a lot of people without power... or, very suddenly, without homes. The footage is impressive, but... FFS, couldn't we have had snow, instead?

The Red Cross is helping the victims, and the Mayor of Rowlett is also suggesting donations to the Salvation Army. This is also a good time to donate blood, if you can. Update: Rhoadan points out in the comments that, actually, donating in response to a disaster isn't necessarily all that helpful, as disasters tend to bring in a huge surge in donations and the Red Cross ends up having to turn people away. Donating regularly, as frequently as you can, is a much better way to help out -- particularly because they often don't have enough donors when there aren't any obvious recent disasters.

They aren't asking for volunteers in the area yet, but I'm sure that will also become possible very soon.

We're also seeing a lot of heavy rain (and apparently there was some hail, last night) so there's potential for more storms, power outages, and the added threat of flooding, flash- or otherwise. If you're in the area, be careful and stay safe.

5 comments:

  1. Have you had a tornado warning before? Tornado warnings are common here in Ohio, but not in December. It's been a crazy winter. We've had one snowfall. And it has been so warm that several of Polly's "dead" flowers have come back to life.

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  2. We get them occasionally -- but not very often, and as you said, not in December. It was, I don't know, seventy-eight degrees before the storms rolled through yesterday; it feels like it's in the sixties, now. If we don't get a reasonable amount of below-freezing temperatures fairly soon, then we're going to have more insects and pollen than air when Spring finally comes around.

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  3. It's not actually a good time to donate blood unless you would normally be donating around now.

    It would be better to wait a day or two, then schedule a donation in the upcoming month or two. Then donate every couple of months (or weeks for platelets only).

    The Red Cross gets so many donors during disasters that they have to turn some away, and much of the blood gets wasted. Then they go crying for donations much of the rest of the time. It's much better to make regular donation at predictable intervals.

    Unfortunately, I'm on permanent deferral due to travels in the UK during the wrong time period.

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    Replies
    1. Okay, thanks. I remember a while back when they were suggesting donating blood as something you could do to help... but now that I think about it, that was all the way back to Hurricane Katrina, so A) my information is out of date, and B) I've clearly lost all track of time. I've updated the post to reflect that.

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  4. Whatever it was you did to deserve this... repent of it already before you get hit with something worse.

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