Folks need to know what type of emergency they're preparing for
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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we have ones that warn of lightening in parks.
Other kinds of severe weather are predictable, whereas there's a big difference between "this pattern could develop into a tornado over the next half hour, batten down the hatches" and "A TORNADO HAS TOUCHED DOWN NEAR YOU, GET TO A SHELTER WITHIN THE NEXT MINUTE OR YOU'LL DIE!"
Yeah, tornado can start, wreck shit up, and disappear in less than five minutes.
Especially back before cell phones there wasn't another way besides loud ass sirens everywhere.
Very good point. I was thinking things like microbursts or some straight line winds could be just as abrupt, but I’m no meteorologist, and having the alarms for imminent tornadoes makes sense, thank you.
I'm in the Dallas area. People here think they're tornado sirens, but they're really outdoor warning sirens. They sound for a tornado warning, winds in excess of 70 mph, hail greater than 1.5", or anything else that creates an outdoor risk. They mean "go indoors and check local news."
That makes sense, thank you!
It’s hard enough to get people to respect the sirens when they’re for tornados. Use them for other shit and people will straight up ignore them.
Legit point lol.
In my state, they (along with the Emergency Broadcast System) were part of the civil defense network created during the Cold War. They were initially intended for war, imminent threat of war, or other national crises. Their brief was later expanded to be used for state and local emergencies. Exactly what they're used for (tornadoes, tsunamis, flood warning, etc) and under what conditions they can be used, depends on your state and local officials.
I'd also add that the government has tried to be rather restrictive about what conditions it could be used under. They want the siren use to be unusual enough that people respond to it as it there's an actual emergency. Unlike, for example, the fire drills you'd have in school or work, where people would debate whether to bother leaving their desks, head back to the office to get their things, etc.
Generally, they're actually multipurpose outdoor warning sirens. If you call them tornado sirens like me, chances are you live in tornado alley, also like me. I didn't learn they were called anything else until I got Everbridge and started getting notifications about "outdoor warning sirens test today."
That’s very probably the case for me—that it is just what we call them around here. Thank you!
This is why. I live in tornado Alley. My state had 152 tornados last year.
Tsunami sirens are a thing in places near where I live.
Theres also a siren for the volunteer fire department about an hour away from where I live because it's a small lake community that has poor cellphone coverage.
We do. I think it can depend on where you are. In my county, it most commonly is for tornadoes, but it can also sound for blizzards, other severe storms, hazardous chemical releases, and 'civil emergency.'
I like this much better than just for tornadoes. You could check your county government website, see what it says.
That’s a great point, I’ll see what my county site says about it. Thanks!
Where I live we do not have tornado sirens, we have air raid sirens (named as such during ww2, and the name stuck). They're used for various emergencies such as floods, avalanche, etc.
I think the name is just down to the original purpose, and its use case is a lot less limited. It wouldn't surprise me if our air raid siren sounded identical to your tornado siren.