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?
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.”
That makes sense, thank you!
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.
Legit point lol.
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.
Folks need to know what type of emergency they’re preparing for