To prepare for a tornado, you need to focus on these three areas of protection:

Identify the safest place in your home. Talk about tornadoes with your family so that everyone knows where to go if a tornado warning is issued. Discussing ahead of time helps reduce fear, especially for younger children. Below are some links to short YouTube videos sponsored by the StormAware Team at the state of Missouri.

If possible, reinforce your home. Consider adding storm windows, storm doors and having a secure foundation, if you can afford those upgrades. This is especially important if you live in an area that frequently experiences tornado activity. Check out our chapter on ‘Other Tornado Preparedness Resources’ for some ideas to reinforce your home from tornadoes.

Check at your workplace and your children's schools and day care centers to learn about their tornado emergency plans. Every building has different safe places.

Ensure that every member of your family carries a Safe and Well wallet card (available for download on the American Red Cross website). Register your family members on the listed website and fill out the back of each card with key contacts and phone numbers.

Make a Family Communication Plan (See our Basic Communication Plan Tiny Course to create your own family communication plan).
Make sure you have access to NOAA radio broadcasts, either through streaming an online NOAA radio station, downloading a NOAA radio app in the Apple Store or Google Play, or purchasing a battery-powered or hand-crank NOAA radio.

Purchase or build an emergency kit and if you’ve had it for six months or more, replenish any items missing or in short supply, especially medications or other medical supplies. Keep it handy or nearby. See our Shelter in Place Tiny Course to learn how to build a shelter in place kit or click here to purchase one of our recommended tornado emergency kits. Keep in mind that during the aftermath of a tornado, outside help may not be able to arrive for several days and having a shelter in place kit available may make all the difference in the world.
As an alternative to your shelter in place emergency kit, consider putting together a tornado specific emergency kit. LifeSecure Emergency Solutions (https://www.yourlifesecure.com) has a Tornado Emergency Kit Checklist for a Family of four (shown on the next page).

Store or save your most important documents. Whether you save copies of your critical documents to a thumb drive, put them in a fire and waterproof safe or have them in a fireproof and waterproof document bag, such as the one we recommend below. The ability to have access to critical financial and personal documents is invaluable if a tornado scatters everything you own across the countryside.

Here is a list of important documents you should consider having copies or originals of:

Birth certificates
Ownership certificates (autos, boats, travel trailers, etc.)
Social security cards
Insurance policies
Will
Household inventory (can be photographs or videotape of contents in every room, plus photographs of high value items such as jewelry, paintings, and collection items, plus a list of contents of the household including serials numbers, if applicable).

Make trees more wind resistant by removing diseased or damaged limbs, then strategically remove branches so that wind can blow through. Strong winds frequently break weak limbs and hurl them at great speed, causing damage or injury when they hit.

Remove any debris or loose items in your yard. Branches and firewood may become missiles in strong winds.

Consider installing permanent shutters to cover windows. Shutters can be closed quickly and provide the safest protection for windows.

Strengthen garage doors. Garage doors are often damaged or destroyed by flying debris, allowing strong winds to enter. As winds apply pressure to the garage walls, the roof can be lifted off, and the rest of the house can easily follow.

Protecting Your Pets & Animals and Other Loved Ones
Prepare a pet emergency kit for your companion animals. Our Shelter in Place Tiny Course has recommendations on which items to have on hand for pets, children, babies and/or infants, as well as for grandparents or other relatives living with you.
If your pets are small, put them in a crate or container with a towel or blanket covering them. Hopefully your pets should have collars or microchips embedded in them which may provide you with a backup plan if they become lost during or after the storm.
Have leashes in your survival bag for the pets. They probably will become skittish during the storm and may try to run away, so having them leashed may prevent them from running into harm’s way.
If you have larger pets, have both collars and leashes on them as a precaution.

How to Prepare for a Tornado Way Before a Tornado Watch is Announced.