NOTE: I'm still perfecting the video blogging thing. The video is smoother in this one than the last one, but the audio is kind of bad, and I'm working on that for the next one.

http://wwwa.accuweather.com/video/video_inline_launchV2.asp?video=http://qt.accuweather.com/flashvideo/vblog_ferrell/ferrell-070302-alabamatornado&category=&thumb=http://qt.accuweather.com/flashvideo/vblog_ferrell/ferrell-070302-alabamatornado.jpg&width=320

And now for a rant. It has been 7 months since my last rant. I don't rant often so when I do you can bet that it's important to me. Fortunately, I don't feel so bad ranting because Henry (PREMIUM | PRO) also ranted about the same subject earlier today.

I'm talking about Tornado Safety and why it's a shame that in this day and age of technology that we still lose precious lives to tornadoes.

It's frustrating to meteorologists that we have finally come to the place in technology where we can warn people significantly ahead of time yet lives are still lost, so we ask ourselves today what we can learn from this tragedy. I hesitate even discussing this subject because it involves the personal lives of so many people, but I feel I must. Henry points out that "more people have died from tornadoes from Jan. 1 to March 1 this year, than any other year in the past 10 years." The number of tornadoes this year is high, yes, but the point is that the number of fatalities is not proportional.

This tornado struck in the middle of the day when people were out and about and should have been able to find shelter, if they were warned properly. As Henry said, the warnings were out. This bit about the school trying to trying to send kids home at 1:00 when the tornado struck is what really bothers me. This was a bad idea. If we are to call kids home from school during a "high risk" day, it should be done as a complete cancellation, like a snow day. There won't be enough warning later in the day to release kids and have the bus routes complete. I can't think of a worse situation than having school buses out driving during a tornado outbreak. High risk situations aren't that common, probably less common than snow in locations north of Alabama, but they aren't rocket science either: The information is freely available from the government, sometimes 2 days in advance. A backup method might be the PDS Tornado Watches that came out, but that might not allow enough time to safely evacuate.

And I'm not sure that we should put the kids back at home, away from their parents in an age when most parents would be at work. And schools are used as shelters these days, so what better place to keep them safe? The question we now need to ask is why this school failed that test. Were the students in the wrong location? Let's increase our planning and practice. Was the school not strong enough to withstand the storm? Let's look at government standards.

After talking with Henry about all of this, he had a good idea: If we keep the kids at school, let's at least practice tornado drills they day before (or even the morning of) expected tornado outbreaks. Let's at least make an announcement that the school is at risk and people need to know where to go if an alarm is sounded.

If all this was done and if every precaution was already taken, then I'm out of line here. Governor Bob Riley just said on Fox News' "The Big Story" that he believes officials did everything they could. Either way, I hope that we can learn something as a nation from this tragedy. I apologize if I have offended anyone.

If you have any information that affects what I've said, or you just want to voice your opinion, please email me but please let me know if you don't want your comments published because I'm sure you'll have some good ideas and I will probably end up posting some of them later this weekend.

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