Tornado Warnings

I was at my usual watering hole on the waterfront last night (Thursday) when the tornado sirens went off. The warning was confirmed by the Weather Channel, a Toledo station, and a Cleveland station. It had been pouring like crazy for at least an hour and all of us knew storms were coming.

Question: Did Cedar Point do anything about it last night? The warning was from 845 to 930pm, and it began to clear up by 10pm. Did they have the ERT?

We weren't too concerned because the peak activity was more or less heading SE down the turnpike and down rte 20.

Roz

I've always wondered what they do in the event of a tornado or other severe weather. They probably shut down all the rides, but where does everyone go?

Although, there are pictures on this website of a waterspout on the Lake Erie side of the park with Magnum running. I'm not a meteorologist, but maybe water spouts don't come ashore? Or there wasn't enough warning to shut down the rides when that happened?

if waterspouts come ashore they shed their water and technically become tornadoes, though they often die out rather quickly. But can still be pretty damaging. Last year when we had the bad weather come through and had the tornadoes touch down in the area they shut down the rides, over in soak city they actually kept superguards out through most of it. But the rest moved into one of the pumphouses. I know some guests were holed up in the gift shop there, so basically any cement block building, unless there's a better tornado shelter somewhere nearby.

Video is related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI27jlwNk2E

Theoretically they should have guests take cover, but I don't know really what they do. Lightning and heat is a much bigger danger than tornadoes ever will be.

PrawoJazdy said:
I've always wondered what they do in the event of a tornado or other severe weather. They probably shut down all the rides, but where does everyone go?

Although, there are pictures on this website of a waterspout on the Lake Erie side of the park with Magnum running. I'm not a meteorologist, but maybe water spouts don't come ashore? Or there wasn't enough warning to shut down the rides when that happened?

Any idea if those pictures are still on here? i have been searching the photo section and cant find them. Thanks

http://pointbuzz.com/Photos/Gallery.aspx?id=363

Walt said:
http://pointbuzz.com/Photos/Gallery.aspx?id=363

Thanks

I was at the park on thursday and friday. they had maverick ERT, and cancelled shoot the rapids ERT. We were hanging out in the midway and called park op and they calcelled STR's ERT because the water was too high from the rain and they shut it down.

We rode MF instead. :)

it rained again on friday night, but it was just heavy rain with thunder and lightning. no rides. it would have been cool to see a water spout during the sunset, however. :)

I was in the park on Thursday. I has just left the Garter when it started raining so I jumped on the train. I stayed on for over an hour, they finally closed that because of the weather. Around 9:30 it cleared up and the opened up the Magnum and Dragster, maybe more but that's all I could see from the back parking lot.

I will have to say when the storm rolled thru when we were there at the begining of july, there was poor communtication.

In the past, before cedar fair took over Kings Island, we were there when a storm rolled thru but unlike Cedar Point, before the storm rolled thru there was large Siren followed by an annoucement over the P.A. that could be heard all over the park. It alerted people the rides were closing and to take shelter and that the rides would not reopen until condition warranted it. I don't know if that has changed.

Now in July at Cedar Point, there was a wicked storm that rolled thru, the only warning we had it was coming was the weather App on my phone. So we headed towards the exit. We knew we had about a half an hour before the storm hit so we were t-shirt shopping. The storm hit and people were running for the exit, the ride ops just shut down the lines by blocking them off with a sign saying the rides were temp. closed. Is that enough? I don't think so. The ride ops are told to shut the rides down by a phone call, as guest, the only info about the weather that we got is, the ride is closed, and that was from a sign. Heck the "police" officer didnt even have a clue how severe the weather was and asked to borrow my Droid to look at the weather, when I was checking it out in a store.

This is a very serious problem. I'm very surprised that a corporate amusement park would have this problem. You would think that this would of been taken care of after the '98 incident.

I was at Valleyfair during a severe storm one Friday evening evening in July of 1998, and the park handled matters fairly well.

Arrived, paid for parking, in for free with a CP pass. Ten yards past the gate I hear a loud clap of thunder. Grrrr...and it was my first visit. Decided to stay since I was supposed to meet someone (who never made it because of a major power outage in his area).

Initially the coasters were shut down but the flats kept on running. As the weather got worse, all rides shut down. Then the speakers stopped playing music and ran information from the NOAA weather service about severe weather warnings.

Then we were all herded into the theater and entertained for awhile. Finally the rain eased a tad and we had permission to leave. I ran for the parking lot, the rain returned with a vengence and I got soaked.

Arrived at the motel looking like a drowned rat and the very pleasant attendant didn't even bat an eye. Up to the room and turned on the TV. There was a severe thunderstorm warning, probably a tornado watch as well., with a large angry red blob right over the park. And there was a second huge red blob to follow.

Next morning I went back to the park and found out that the park had eventually been evacuated, and that Wild Thing had been struck by lightning.

Roz

I was at Kings Island last spring when there were tornados touching down in the surrounding areas, and the park employees put us in a Larosa's freezer. lol but we got free pizza so it was cool. :)

I am surprised that Cedar Point does not have an intercom system like Kings Island has. Kings Island would be much more organized than Cedar Point if a storm hit.

Long time ago.. possibly 15-20 years ago, some real bad storms came through CP. The people that stuck around to brave it out were ordered to take shelter in the large arcade off the midway. It was a scary experience.

Coasterfanatic I was probably there that day at Kings Island too. There were sirens going off and everyone got sent to shelters. There was next to no one out on the midway. It was so weird watching the foutains lose half of their water by blowing on the midway. We ended up in a gift shop full of glass windows and glassware. Hahaha well atleast there wasn't a tornado because we were probably in one of the worst tornado shelters ever. It would have been nice to get some free pizza though, if only we got a few more feet. :)

As a weather nerd, I am surprised that CP does not have a way to announce severe weather, or at least run NOAA warnings over the speakers. When I worked at CP and our ride would go down for weather, people were able to stay in line and wait out the storm. For tornado warnings, or particularly dangerous severe thunderstorm warnings, we would allow people to fill the platforms to take cover, however we would advise them to leave the line and take cover elsewhere. The crew would then take shelter in the electrical room below the ride. One crew member would stay in the station to watch the crowd on the platform.

^Wow that doesn't sound safe for the guest or the crew.

Unfortunatly, it will probaly take a lawsuit from someone that gets hurt for them to do anything about it.

I don't even think Cedar Point has a park wide PA system to get the word out that a severe storm is coming.