Tornado warnings
 

Rain and thunder are not a requirement for a tornado warning. A radar indicated tornado or an actual sighting of a tornado is all that is required

6-10 inches of snow is our Ohio forecast. Ugh! :(

Actually, the National Weather Service did issue a tornado warning for Sumter County for a short time this afternoon and then for Orange County as well as Brevard County. Rotation was detected within areas of the storm, but as far as I know, nothing happened....no funnel clouds spotted last I saw on tv. My weather radio sounded like the horn section in a symphony today...lol....and we did get a Code Red call for a severe thunderstorm warning.

I hope everyone knows they should register to receive automated phone calls on both home and cell, from the county Red Alert system in case of tornado, flash flood, etc. at this link:

https://cne.coderedweb.com/Default.a...D%2f%2bA%3d%3d

I did receive a call from the system at 1:59 p.m. today, warning about the severe thunderstorm possibilities.

Again, I'm going to ask WHY, WHY, WHY do TV fire stations not sound the firestation sirens if there's a tornado warning? This is what's done in all the other places we've lived, in various states.

I lived in St Louis area for the first 50 years of my life and they used the air raid/ emergency sirens to signal tornado warnings

Not sure they would be heard in all parts of TV. If you subscribe to Comcast for TV, there were alerts broadcast off and on this afternoon.
A weather radio costs relatively little and the nice firemen at any Villages station will program it for Sumter, Lake and/or Marion County(ies).

Thank You!

And I do have a weather radio with siren, which I would not be without. But all the lifestyle preview, renters and visitors from around the nation and world do not have one...and they wouldn't know about registering for the county emergency robo-call system....and they're not watching TV to see alerts on it while asleep at night.

Those other places you lived had a siren system. All placed so the population could hear them. Our fire stations are not located to accomplish full coverage.
Do the stations even have sirens?
After the tornado hit TV there was much talk about a siren system in Sumter County.

Villages fire stations do not have sirens. At one time it was common for volunteer fire depts to have sirens to notify volunteers of an emergency and the sirens did double duty in areas of tornado activity.

We were at Bay Hill today for the tournament and everything stopped 20 min. after Tiger teed off. The thunder & Lightning and winds were crazy. They actually blew us over. I have never been in anything like that before. After about 45 mins we ran back to the busses and left for our car that was parked at Universal. We saw many trees down and power was out all over Orlando. It was scarey. We were soaked. But still had a great time.

It can be done. And considering "Florida is the 2nd most likely state to experience tornado activity", it would be nice if people did not pooh-pooh the idea.

"OUTDOOR TORNADO SIREN WARNING SYSTEM
The Oviedo (FL) City Council has invested in an Outdoor Tornado Siren Warning System as part of a comprehensive approach towards mass alerting for tornado severe weather events. Tornadoes are one of the most destructive severe weather events that often result in serious injuries and loss of life and Florida is the second most likely state to experience tornado activity.

The Outdoor Tornado Siren Warning System consists of numerous sirens strategically located within the Oviedo community. Each siren emits a 130 dB siren tone which covers approximately a 1 mile outdoor range......

OUTDOOR TORNADO SIREN WARNING SYSTEM | City of Oviedo, Florida

This report sums up the conclusions after the tornado that hit The Villages.

Quick Response Report 193 | Natural Hazards Center

The Groundhog Day Florida Tornadoes:
A Case Study of High-Vulnerability Tornadoes
Kevin M. Simmons
Department of Economics
Austin College
Sherman, Texas

Daniel Sutter
Department of Economics
University of Texas–Pan American
Edinburg, Texas

2007


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An excerpt:
Tornado Sirens and Fatalities in the February 2 Tornadoes
Lake County, like most other counties in Florida, does not have tornado sirens. The lack of sirens produced controversy in the aftermath of the Groundhog Day tornadoes, and many residents were upset. One resident of Lake County whose home was destroyed remarked, “What we need is a damn siren! Some kind of wake-up call! There’s a lot of people who got hurt and killed” (quoted in Damron 2007). Other residents appeared under the impression that the area did have sirens and figured that sirens would alert them if there was a tornado, so a lack of blaring sirens was interpreted as implying no danger. Tiefenbacher et al. (2001) found that residents of Siren, Wisconsin, expected the town’s sirens to sound during a June 2001 tornado event, but the town’s sirens had been knocked out by a lightning strike the month prior. Table 1 illustrated that a large proportion of Lake and Sumter County residents had recently moved to Florida. If new Floridians were from states where sirens are prevalent, they may assume their new Florida community has sirens. The lack of a siren warning may result in an entirely unwarranted sense of security.

City and county officials in Florida faced pressure to install sirens in the aftermath of the event, and 26 of 28 officials surveyed by The Orlando Sentinel indicated an interest in installing sirens. Officials stated several factors to explain their reluctance to date to invest in sirens. New, energy efficient homes are more sound resistant, and many Floridians keep their homes buttoned up with the air conditioning running much of the year, so officials wondered if residents today could actually hear sirens. The high proportion of elderly residents, many with hearing losses, contributes to doubts about whether residents would hear sirens. And sirens in rural areas could be quite costly per resident. Many Florida officials view the purchase of NOAA Weather Radios by residents as a superior alternative to public tornado sirens.

Actually most experts would say if you don't have a basement or approved tornado shelter to go to, go to your guest bath, get in the tub and pull a mattress over you if you can. The reason for the warning is they save lives.

Hawaii has warning sirens located on tall poles all over the islands. The system is tested on the first of every month. I believe most are solar powered.

A problem that I see that has developed here is similar to what happened up north with blizzard warnings.

My weather radio goes off so often and the NW and local weather reporters give tornado warnings so often that people are just starting to ignore them.

My weather radio woke me up one morning at 3:00 am to advise me of a frost warning. It was going off so often that I unplugged it.

There were many tornado warning on the television on Saturday and people were just going about their business ignoring the warnings.

It's probably that it's very difficult to distinguish when there is a real possibility of a tornado or just a slight chance so they give these warnings every time there is any kind of a thunderstorm.

It's becoming like the little boy that cried wolf. Unfortunately, some day the wolf is going to arrive.

But as I discussed in my previous post, if everyone was to jump into their bathtub and hide under a mattress every time our weather radio gave us a warning, we'd spend most of our lives remaking our beds.

The fact is that we have had one tornado hit TV in the last 50 years. I know that it did severe damage in a small area and scare the living daylights out of the people that experienced it. But the reality is that they very seldom hit. I'd love to know the ration of how many tornadoes actually touch down to the number of warning given.

I suspect you mean that your weather radio gave you an "alert", rather than a "warning". I also wonder how broad of an area you have it set for if you received so many alerts. I have mine set for Sumter County only and I only received a couple of alerts on Saturday. They were for severe thunderstorms with the possibility of hail. I don’t believe there was any mention of tornados. There is a difference between a watch and a warning. A watch indicates that conditions are right for the development of tornados. A warning indicates that one or more tornados have already touched down. Before I moved to TV we had a tornado warning in the area I was living. After hearing the warning, I collected my battery operated radio and tuned into local channels. As it was moving along, the local news was giving fairly accurate locations (just a few blocks from my home). When they started repeating “take cover now, take cover now, take cover now”...I was in the bathtub. The smallest mattress in the house was a queen size, so I didn’t take a mattress, but I did grab as many pillows as I could carry. Fortunately the tornado did not hit my house, but it did do a lot of damage nearby. So to answer your question, if the weather radio gave a tornado warning for the county you live in, no I wouldn’t necessarily run for cover at that point. But I would be ready to run for cover and I would tune into the local news and pay close attention to their reports. In my opinion, the weather radio is most useful at night when you are sleeping and wouldn’t otherwise get a warning or be able to observe the way the sky looked.

I would prefer the weather radio at home, smart phone app, and IPad app that sounds versus a siren. One: you can hear it better, and, Two: it is portable and you can than view it with the radar for more information. Probably a few of you have an IPad or smart phone that can be used. The phone is nice since it warns you IF you are not home also. Such as the golf course, when the weather is not stormy, but looks ominous, shopping, squares, indoors elsewhere. Ours all went of yesterday. We looked at the radars on the IPad and found the storms were south of TV heading east. north we had basements, but those that don't they tell you go to an interior room in the house with no windows. Dragging a queen mattress is a bit much too. :)
I was a weather spotter north (Skywarn) for the area so I also was one when it got bad, was outdoors looking and reporting, versus in a room until it was no longer safe. There must be weather spotting classes around here? If not, the local stations should start them. It is a good training session and describes what to look for, what to do, when to do it, and much more. You can than volunteer to be a spotter. They contact you (phone/text) and ask if you are available to spot the area. They than used the spotters for more information and videos if possible.

I just looked up Skywarn and there are classes that can be attended in central Florida. They also say that each county will have a class at least once per year. I emailed Scott to ask where and when there will be one in Sumter County.
Hopefully this posts works.
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/media/mlb/pd...arnclasses.pdf

we have the weather radio and of course the comcast emergency alert system.
Plus an iphone...which fills in all the blanks of everything you want to know about the weather around you.

What is NOT NEEDED is the local FL channels barging in every 10 minutes and staying on for 15 minutes providing a technical presentation of the graphics with theatrics and emotion. Almost totally useless information. As if we need to know the street by street arrival times of the wind or rain. They are geared to a 5th grade level audience with information that would actually be an insult the intelligence of most 5th graders.

btk

Why is your radio giving so many tornado warnings? I would check your settings. An alert is not the same as a tornado warning.