Question about tornado sirens

[Lauren]

I've seen different protocol in different places.

My question is, at what point do they sound tornado sirens? Once it's actively on the ground? When the storm has a high chance of tornado?

[Paul]

I believe it's when the storm is tornado (and in some cases severe) warned, or when a spotter sees a tornado on the ground. I don't think there's a national set of rules on it though, so it can vary from state to state. This is a set of guidelines from one state

https://www.weather.gov/media/dvn/QC Siren Guidelines_final.pdf

[MikeUpjohn]

Yeah, there are different rules based on where you are as Paul said. On the Dodge City tornado day, a good 10 to 15 minutes before the tornado physically formed, the radar picked up strengthening rotation as the meso developed, and they issued a tornado warning. Anyone inside the tornado warning box had sirens go off as precaution. So this little town that we were in had sirens go off for a storm that was to their North and moving away, but limitations of the system I guess and better to be safe than sorry.

And if you never heard one before, they are really cool, but very spooky when they go off!

[Lauren]

So who is in charge of setting them off?

[Paul]

Local law enforcement i believe. 

[Nick L]

Or in the case of Dallas a few years back in the dead of night, hackers!

[MikeUpjohn]

I remember that! Someone sounded them in the middle of the night by writing some code to hack the system or something. Amazing, that not even this is safe anymore

[Nick L]

1 hour ago, mikeofmacc said:

I remember that! Someone sounded them in the middle of the night by writing some code to hack the system or something. Amazing, that not even this is safe anymore

The Dallas local govt didn't help themselves. They had to go to each one individually to manually turn them off!

[nsrobins]

On 28/10/2018 at 16:38, mikeofmacc said:

Yeah, there are different rules based on where you are as Paul said. On the Dodge City tornado day, a good 10 to 15 minutes before the tornado physically formed, the radar picked up strengthening rotation as the meso developed, and they issued a tornado warning. Anyone inside the tornado warning box had sirens go off as precaution. So this little town that we were in had sirens go off for a storm that was to their North and moving away, but limitations of the system I guess and better to be safe than sorry.

And if you never heard one before, they are really cool, but very spooky when they go off!

That was Minneola - we were queued at the rail crossing heading North when they started up (with the two hundred other chasers lol). It really is an unearthly sound if you’re not used to it. Happened the next day in Solomon KS too.

The ‘rules’ vary a bit but these days a siren will be activated if the town lies within the warning polygon, which can be triggered by both radar indicated or spotter report. 

[Cookie]

Should be all taken down. nightmare! 

[SpringStorms]

I don't get cookie's thought of taking them all down. They're kind of a mandatory severe storm warning thing for us. Have a great storm chase tour!! I'm in  most hated state of Nebraska....LOL

 

[Cookie]

On 26/03/2019 at 07:01, SpringStorms said:

I don't get cookie's thought of taking them all down. They're kind of a mandatory severe storm warning thing for us. Have a great storm chase tour!! I'm in  most hated state of Nebraska....LOL

 

They don’t work as they should do. People over rely on them. They can easily be hacked.

[SpringStorms]

But not really by most people. Still we'll look up and then look at the weather, hacked or not at least we will look at the weather.

 Good luck chasing this year!