Tornado Siren Failures in Kentucky, Ohio This Week

There has been some local (but not a lot of national) media coverage on a couple of tornado sirens that didn't do their job this week. Unfortunately, this is not the first time I've blogged about this. First, Monday north of Louisville, Kentucky in Jefferson County, the sirens failed to be activated, even though a Tornado Warning was issued. According to the Courier Journal, the investigation is not complete but technical or human error are to blame; the local communications company responsible for the sirens admitted that they received the warning from the NWS.

However, even if the sirens would have been active, it probably would have been too late for where the tornado struck (it touched down near Utica in Clark County, Indiana before crossing the river into Kentucky). According to the National Weather Service, the tornado damage stopped at the exact same time that the Warning was issued (4:31 AM). If tornado sirens existed to the northeast of town, they might have helped, as damage continued to be reported for another 8 minutes, even though the tornado was no longer on the ground.

In Mariemont, Ohio (near Cincinnati), residents also complained that "weather sirens" (normally activated there by either Severe Thunderstorm or Tornado warnings) didn't go off until after the storm had passed Monday morning. It's hard to prove whether or not that is true, since no spotter report was issued in Mariemont, but the warning was issued at 5:29 AM, around the time the sirens were sounded, but "about 15 minutes after the brunt of the storm passed" according to the article linked above. The National Weather Service in Wilmington, Ohio is investigating the event.

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While the answers to why these sirens performed poorly remain elusive, it's worth reminding readers that these things can happen -- there can be technical and human errors which prevent these systems from working. Tornado sirens often involve archaic hardware which requires manual activation. Even copper theft can rob you of those valuable warnings, or you could be out of range. Even the Emergency Broadcast warnings on television are run off of the "old" way of issuing Warnings, county-wide, not the polygons that you see above (in that case it means they are more likely to overestimate the coverage area of a warning - better safe than sorry I guess).

So what can you do? Don't depend on these things alone. Have a NOAA WeatherRadio and a cell-phone alerting service (we have some available for wireless devices and our RadarPlus service also offers alerts). If you are a business, take a look at our Enterprise Services that can protect you.