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Imagine you are driving to a city 10 hours away that you’ve never been to before, and as you get closer to your destination, the sky gets darker. All of a sudden, the emergency alerts on your phone go off saying there is a tornado warning for the area where you are driving. What do you do?

We plan for a lot of situations, but this one was not something I expected. As I approached St. Louis, a city I was visiting for the first time, my heart began racing as I looked for exits that might have a safe shelter. The GPS was telling me I had 5 miles to go to reach my hotel, and I know the average time I need to get to shelter during a tornado warning is 14 minutes (according to the National Weather Service). 

I called a family member to see if they could pull up the radar while I was driving and tell me where the polygons were being drawn. Could they tell me which direction the National Weather Service was predicting the tornadoes might go? 

Ultimately, I decided taking the 5 minutes to get to the hotel was the best solution for safe sheltering. After that warning was lifted, I was walking in downtown St. Louis when, yet another warning was issued for my area. A second situation I had not planned for. I ducked into a building on the first floor until I received the “all clear.”

Why am I sharing this story? 

I have found that while teaching severe weather training, most people have thought about where to shelter in their home and some even at their work buildings. But what about the unexpected? How do we plan for that? 

First, it is important to monitor the weather regardless of where you are and ensure the emergency alerts are turned on for your phone. Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) can follow your phone through a process known as geofencing. Geofencing are targeted alerts by location to help people respond correctly based on their location. 

Here's a video showing how to turn on emergency alerts on your phone.

If you receive an alert about a tornado warning, you should immediately seek shelter on the first floor of a secure building, away from windows, near the interior of the building, away from exterior walls. If you have something to protect your head (like a helmet), be sure to use it. Once a tornado warning is issued, time is of the essence. You have, on average, 14 minutes to get to safety. However, there could be a lag in the amount of time it takes for you receive the warning (maybe your phone is on mute or power is out). If you receive a warning, it is always a good idea to inform friends and family if you know they are in the affected area. 

Mississippi's recent tornadic activity

Let’s take a quick look at the tornadic activity in Mississippi from earlier this month (May 4-9, 2026).

Screenshot of the NOAA Damage Assessment Toolkit interface displaying storm damage survey tracks and assessment points across southern Mississippi and parts of Louisiana between May 4 and May 9, 2026. 

The National Weather Service conducted damage surveys and determined that the initially reported two EF3 tornadoes from the May 6 nighttime severe weather outbreak were actually a single, continuous long track tornado with a path length of nearly 70 miles, a maximum width of over a mile (1.17 miles) and maximum wind speeds of 140 mph. 

Mississippi is no stranger to long-track tornadoes with at least 15 historical tornadoes having tracks of 100 miles or longer. However, this one will most likely make the top 25 of all-time longest tracks in the state once the damage assessments are complete and we have all the data. This long-track tornado surprisingly had no fatalities, although 13 people were injured. This is likely due in part to the timely and proactive warnings from the National Weather Service’s Jackson, Mississippi, and Slidell, Louisiana, offices. 

VORTEX-SE Team helps people plan and prepare

These types of incidents remind us to be vigilant. It is also the reason our VORTEX-SE Outreach and Engagement Team is on the ground conducting trainings, tabling at events and attending conferences, festivals and community events to share safety information to protect people and property. Here are a few places we have been in the past two months. 

Hurricane Awareness Tour hosted at the Mobile International Airport (Brookley) on May 5, 2026. Tabling here with our partners from the National Weather Service New Orleans/Baton Rouge, National Weather Service Mobile and Boat People SOS. We now have severe weather information translated into Vietnamese thanks to our partners! (Photo courtesy of Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant)
1. Women wearing disposable gloves prepare food on a camp stove. 2. Workshop participants sit at round tables in a conference room and listen to a presentation. 3. Participants work in small groups during a Weather Wise training workshop, seated around a conference table with educational materials, laptops and activity cards spread across the room. 4. A presenter leads a Weather Wise training session while attendees sit around a conference table watching a screen displaying weather and preparedness information.
At left, (top): Tracie Sempier, right, teaches participants in a Disaster Preparedness Workshop how to cook pizza sandwiches on a butane camping stove at the Knight Nonprofit Center in Gulfport, Mississippi, on May 8, 2026. We partnered with several nonprofit organizations, Mississippi Emergency Management and local businesses. (Bottom): Participants listen to an informational presentation. At right, (top): Librarians complete an exercise on identifying weather icons on cell phones during a Librarian Weather Wise Train-the-Trainer workshop in Oxford, Mississippi, on April 20, 2026. (Bottom): Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant's Kristiana Allen explains why the U.S. Southeast region is uniquely vulnerable to tornadoes. (Photos courtesy of Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant)

We hope to see you in your neck of the woods soon! If you would like to host a training event on severe weather, please contact me at [email protected], and let’s get something on the books!

Meet the author

Tracie Sempier, Ph.D.

Resilience Engagement Lead

Tracie Sempier serves as the resilience engagement lead at Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant. She engages with communities to help them become more resilient and works to decrease negative impacts of... Read more

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