In South Carolina, when my older sister was in first grade, there was a tornado at her school. She said that the kids could see the funnel cloud from the classroom window. The teacher had them get under their desks. Luckily it went by them and nobody was hurt. When I was in elementary school, we had tornado drills. We would all go to the interior hallway where there were no windows and crouch down on the floor in a fetal position and cover our heads with our hands. Our school was a brick building reinforced with rebar, which is the most ideal structure to be in during a tornado. I can remember hurricaines when I was a child. One was so strong that a drive-in movie screen blew away and was never found. I also can remember the civil defense sirens when I was a child in the late 60's. We also felt tremors from an earthquake once that measured 7.5 on the Richter scale.
We camped in a tent at Lake Erie several years back. Suddenly a quiet night turned into a bad thunderstorm with strong winds and we took cover in the car. It was over almost as soon as it had begun. We packed everything up the next morning and headed for home. We couldn't believe the devestation along the way. Houses were flattened and huge tree were uprooted. Apparently there had been a couple of tornadoes the night before.