What does your town's weather alert sound like?

[usnuzuloose]

We only get them on t.v. and it is like a beep sort of.

 

[marcyleecorgan]

I don't think our city has any... the only extreme weather we get is pretty obvious it's happening. Like hail, crazy winds, and blizzards. And you can tell that any of them will happen from looking at the sky and clouds...

I have lived where they have the nuclear facility alarms. Also where they have the air-raid sirens for tornadoes, tsunami, and other weather things. I agree, that sound sends me right into panic mode.

 

[indimom]

Air raid siren type. Very loud. Tested on Saturday at noon. Ours is just used for tornadoes. It seems like they set it off for every flipping thunderstorm in the spring, so I tend to ignore it, to be honest.
We also get the beeping television alerts mentioned above.

 

[MillauFr]

We don't have weather alerts in Seattle. We can have hurricane force winds on rare occasions but we know they are coming and don't hit us with surprise like a tornado.

 

[aprilgail]

I've never heard of anyone with a town weather alert- I did not even know such a thing existed.

 

[MouseLover]

I live in Arkansas. We have the classic tornado siren. It is very loud and there's no mistaking it for anything else.

 

[kaytieeldr]

I used to live in Mass. near Westover Air Force Base , and I seem to recall a siren of some sort going off for hurricane or tornado warnings a few times.

Hurricane usage doesn't make sense . It's not as if a hurricane suddenly appears. Even when they change paths, it's slow. I think we've only had maybe a half dozen tornados in my life.

Our town does have flashing blue lights on the signal poles. They let everyone know no street parking.

City. Your city. There are 31 cities and 320 towns in Massachusetts. Salem is one of those cities

 

[nene0182]

I live in N.D. ours is the traditional tornado siren. It usually goes off if a tornado has been spotted within so many miles of the city (not sure what that is) or when we have high winds over a certain mph. The University has a talking alarm that’s basically the same voice from the radio that you can hear from miles away.

 

[amcnj]

The only weather related siren was when schools were closed due to snow. They used the siren that was for calling the volunteer firefighters in, and they also blew it at noon each day for some reason.

 

[georgina]

No weather sirens here in my suburbs. They used to have a volunteer firefighter siren, but no longer use it because there are better methods of contacting the fire fighters, who are not usually nearby at the time of a fire! I guess if there was some sort of emergency they could still use that horn.

Having grown up in a city with a full time fire department, it was hard to get used to the idea that they only have volunteers around here, which seriously increases the response time.

 

[mummabear]

Is this the norm most places, or does your town have a different system?

Not really a weather alert, we do have a tsunami warning system that comes via a kind of text message. The message alert though sounds like a air raid siren and is loud enough to wake you up

 

[Kitty 34]

Our small town's siren goes off at a high pitch steady noise for 3 minutes if there has been a tornado sighted. Otherwise, any other emergency like, for example, a missile from Canada, I have no clue how that'll sound.

 

[scrhsa]

We don't have a weather alert but we have a " if the chemical plant blows up or leaks " alert. Though, I live close enough that I will know when it blows up!! It goes off every Wednesday at noon as a test. "This is only a test, this is only a test...wooowooowooowooo....this is only a test" And its directly at the end of my street. So glad I didn't have napping babies when we moved here!!!!!

 

[MrsCobraBubbles]

I've lived in Maine since I was 2 years old and as far as I know, we don't have one. I've lived in 5 different towns as well.

Yeah, we don't have one where I live either. We do have a siren for the volunteer firefighters though, it's super loud and annoying and I'm guessing it's similar to your weather siren. Thankfully we don't have many fires here. Not much in the way of natural disasters in Pennsylvania so there's no need for alarms.

 

[Keli]

Typical tornado siren sound in the town I work in but I don't hear the monthly tests at work so I think we are too far away to hear it at this building. And I know I'm too far away to hear it from the house.

 

[Gumbo4x4]

Like an air raid siren

 

[mamamary]

We don't have one.

 

[Kellykins1218]

Ours is just a loud siren. The city I moved from had the siren which was then followed by an announcement of what the warning was for. That was the loudest one I've ever heard because you could hear and understand every single word of the warning being given across town.

 

[mjkacmom]

The big weather here are blizzards and hurricanes, we get tons of advance notice, for a good week, it’s annoying.

 

[RangerPooh]

When we lived in Michigan there was a tornado siren, but if you didn't live on a main road then you didn't hear it. We lived close enough to a main road that you could only hear it if the windows were open, and even then it was hard to hear.

Maryland, nothing. Apparently there was a siren in the county seat and that was it.

California, nothing.

Washington- in the college town that we lived, the university would test emergency alert sirens/announcements that could be heard anywhere in town. If your windows were closed it would be muffled but you could make out something and check. If they were open it was clear to hear. Only ever heard it for testing. We lived by the ocean briefly and there was a tsunami alter siren that we heard a few times, both as tests and emergency alerts. We did live in one small town that blasted an old air raid siren at noon everyday to call the farms to lunch.

Tennessee, there are sirens but I've only heard them twice for testing. Not when we were actually under tornado alters to take shelter.