The Windy City

I was just enjoying an afternoon coffee round at Buffy's, when Ross called.
"Where are you?" he hissed, sounding a bit panicked.
"In Buffy's bathroom, we're looking at her tiles," I answered, as you do.
I should, at this point, explain that now Matt has finished with me, he is already moving onto his next conquest- Buffy's master bathroom. So fickle, that man.
"Get into the basement," Ross continued. "Haven't you heard the news?"
"Well, no, I'm looking at the bathroom. When we women get together we have far better things to do than watch TV."
"There's a tornado watch. Get into the basement," Ross repeated. "I have to go down to the basement at work now. Bye."
Looking out of the windows, we saw it was a little dark. Actually the trees did seem to be lying horizontally, now I thought of it.
So we went down into the basement to watch TV to find out what was happening.
Tornados had indeed been spotted a little to the north and a little to the south of us.
As a native mid-westerner, Buffy seemed unfazed. They seem to have to take cover at the drop of a hat. She gave me some good advice.
"The time to worry is if the sky ever turns green," she warned. "That means a tornado is coming. When it passes it sounds like a freight train overhead."
Coming from a country where the whole place grinds to a standstill if a few centimetres of snow fall, this all sounded a little worrying. The problem is, from the basement we couldn't see out, so there was no way of knowing what was happening. I certainly couldn't hear any trains, freight or otherwise.
Eventually we went back upstairs to find the skies brightening. The schools had kept children back as the warning occured as soon was letting out. Buffy's son rang to say he was on his way back.
"Still," I confided to Buffy. "At least you get a warning. I'd much rather live here than on the West coast with all those earthquakes."
"Didn't you know?" replied the font of all information. "South Chicago lies on the edge of the San Andreas Fault."