Desperately out of Touch with Tornadoes

In tonight's Desperate Housewives cliffhanger, the town spends the better part of a day preparing for oncoming tornadoes.

Once the local weather bureau declares a tornado watch, characters on the show:

- tape up windows
- stock up on bottled water
- buy batteries
- head to basements hours in advance.

It's pretty clear no one writing this episode has ever lived in or around tornado country. (In fact, they seem to have confused tornadoes with hurricanes.) If those of us in living in tornado alley taped up our windows every time a tornado watch were declared, we wouldn't be able to see out of our windows for all the tape.

Tornadoes may be part of larger storm systems, but they don't generally give people hours and hours of notice before descending on a town. In fact, that's why they're so frightening -- they're sudden, dropping out of the sky with little or no warning.

On tonight's episode, though, the Fairview tornado builds slowly and steadily over time, rising to a crescendo until the funnel arrives. It's a great dramatic device ... but a tornado? Nope.