Train or Tornado?

It is bad weather time here.  So last night, after dark, the storm started to roll through.  I normal LOVE a good storm.  I was listening to the thunder and the rain - something peaceful about that when I'm in the house.  While I talked to my boyfriend on the phone, the scanner went off and said there was a tornado warning in the South half of our county.  So WOW was I surprised when minutes later the sirens started to sound. 

My house does not have a really safe place to hide.  Windows in every room of the house.  So I grabbed a blanket and sat in a spot nearest to the center with the least access to potential flying glass and listened to the weather outside.  I had already lost TV, radio and all outside connections (the problem with modern technology.)  I had a DVR'd movie running quietly in the background. 

Just then, a TRAIN went by so I sat there, diagnosing the sounds...."train or tornado?"  After hearing all of the various sounds the siren - maybe, the deep rolling sound, and a periodic clanking of the metal on metal as it goes down the track.  I decided it was most likely a train.  We get a train about every 40 minutes through town.  I don't hear most of them but this one I did.

When I was young, my town used to have a noon whistle.  I was in afternoon Kindergarten and mom usually sent me out to the bus stop when the noon whistle blew.  One day, just before noon, the whistle blew.  Parents all over town, sent their children out to the bus stop.  The buses never came.  It was a tornado warning.  Shortly after that day, the noon whistle stopped blowing.  I don't think I was sent out because it was raining.  If I remember right, we watched from the door.  We often watched bad weather from the door.