The National Weather Service doesn’t care how people wake up when a tornado threatens, as long as the tornado doesn’t do the waking.
Indiana will observe Severe Weather Preparedness Week next week and conduct statewide warning tests Wednesday.
These days, many people rely on their cell phones to receive alerts about incoming severe weather, a reliance that severe-weather experts say should be backed up by traditional alert methods.
Allen County maintains a network of 57 emergency sirens, tested monthly and on special occasions, such as this Wednesday’s test, said Lori Mayers, assistant director of the Fort Wayne-Allen County Office of Homeland Security.
As the sirens age, they are costly to maintain on the $15,000 annual budget. A new siren costs about $20,000, Mayers said. Sirens still have their roles, she said, and the department has no plans to cut back on maintaining them. But their uses are limited.
“We try to stress that they are outdoor warning sirens,” she said.
But another layer of safety can only help.
“Any way that anybody can get weather info is great,” Mayers said.
Mayers said weather radio remains the most effective system. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration all-hazards weather radio will alert residents to local warnings and watches issued by the National Weather Service.
Weather radios are equipped with a special alarm tone sound and alert when a warning is broadcast.
Dan McCarthy, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Indianapolis, agrees the weather radio remains the best way to ensure that people will know of impending severe weather. It’s especially useful when a tornado threatens while most people are sleeping, such as the 2005 Evansville tornado that killed 25.
“What’s going to wake people up?” he said.
Cell phone users can subscribe to various localized weather alerts, sent by text message. A text message might not wake someone up as well as a weather radio, McCarthy said.
And McCarthy, who has worked in Oklahoma in the heart of tornado country, said he worries that phone lines might become jammed during a tornado or cell towers could be affected.
But that doesn’t mean the weather service isn’t focused on the next generation of alerts, such as cell phones and GPS that can make alerts more geographically focused.
“We talk more and more about that being the future of our warnings,” McCarthy said.
For now, media outlets can pick up the longitude and latitude of threatening storms – included in National Weather Service alerts – and create their own warnings. That’s because the weather service warnings are in the public domain, McCarthy said.
Subscriptions to text-message weather alerts are available at the National Weather Service Web site, he said, but there is no record of how many people sign up.
Other text-message subscription programs are reticent about how many people take advantage of the personalized services.
The Weather Channel sends “a lot” of localized text messages through its free service, spokeswoman Melissa Medori said.
“Severe weather alerts” is one of 10 categories of Weather Channel alerts available, Medori said, and it’s one of the most popular, along with the “forecasts” category. The alerts were first offered in 2000, with a relaunch in 2007.
The Weather Channel won’t give specific subscription numbers, but Medori said that during times of severe weather, there is an increase of about 100 percent in text messages sent.
In any case, according to the National Weather Service’s McCarthy, studies have shown that people’s habits are hard to change when it comes to storms.
“Many people, when they get a warning on the weather radio, they turn on their television for confirmation,” he said. “Television is still a very big means where we communicate to the people.”
