Other severe storm events like straight line winds can be dangerous and unpredictable like tornadoes, so why do we have tornado sirens instead of more general highly-severe-storm-alarm sirens?
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.
This is why. I live in tornado Alley. My state had 152 tornados last year.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
