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Severe WX April 1-2 (overnight) Severe Weather Event

Clancy said:
Siren tech is a bit of a nightmare, and as much as I love them (they're really awesome works of human engineering and I'm addicted to listening to them), I think they cause unique problems in public mass notification. Sirens still remain in widespread use because they have a unique place in being able to alert large numbers of people outdoors, across a large radius, and aren't reliant on individual receivers, such as phones. In that way, they are a very efficient/effective outdoor warning solution. And yet, they are very costly, can be prone to malfunction, damage and wear, have limited range, and should never be relied on indoors. I still don't fully fold into the opinion that we should trash them all, I think they still have utility, but they're still relied upon way more than they should be in today's day and age. At the same time, I don't really have a single good solution because of the broad utility sirens provide as mass outdoor notification systems, so it poses a bit of a headscratcher - if they are, indeed, more trouble than they're worth, what do we do instead? I'm not sure weather radios and WEAs are sufficient, because I know a lot of people who 1) don't have an NWR, 2) have their WEAs disabled, or 3) may be outdoors without their mobile devices. It's a complicated problem, and I think it'll require the dialogue of many local EMA offices, social scientists, engineers and meteorologists, all discussing broadly-applicable, affordable mass warning solutions, which is no easy task.
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It really is astonishing how pricey sirens are. Most places budget for about $1,000 a siren/annually for maintenance, depending on the type/age. Like you said, sitting in the elements 24/7/365, battling animals that love to chew on wires and inspects that build nests in siren heads and stop them from rotating or audio activating. Batteries, fuses, etc. it all adds up.

I agree that they still hold value, in the proper context. If you talk to emergency managers, about half would love to take every one of them down. While the other half still try to place them on every corner. Policies vary at every county from testing day to use during SVR to even how often they sound during a TOR. This has been a point of discussion at our IWT workshops between NWS/EM/Media partners here in FFCs area. In the end, there are even politic influences that come into play in some cities/counties. I agree that more needs to be done and there are tons of ways to get warnings. So, I don’t have the answer but I hope we find it. At the end of the day, and I could ramble for hours, people have to also want to take care of themselves. They turn their WEA off, unplug and take the batteries out of a NWR, don’t sign up for county mass notification systems, etc. This is an issue that I don’t see changing anytime soon, because of human nature.
 
Western_KS_Wx said:
Figured I’d share this here as well, this is what remains of a Dodge Ram 1500 that was reportedly thrown a mile into a field just outside Lake City, Arkansas. Just extreme damage.
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The first thing I noticed about the truck is that all four tires are ripped off. I believe I've seen cars and trucks thrown by tornadoes before where that was NOT the case. Is ripping tires off kind of like getting hit so hard you're knocked out of your shoes?
 
NorthGaWeather said:
It really is astonishing how pricey sirens are. Most places budget for about $1,000 a siren/annually for maintenance, depending on the type/age. Like you said, sitting in the elements 24/7/365, battling animals that love to chew on wires and inspects that build nests in siren heads and stop them from rotating or audio activating. Batteries, fuses, etc. it all adds up.

I agree that they still hold value, in the proper context. If you talk to emergency managers, about half would love to take every one of them down. While the other half still try to place them on every corner. Policies vary at every county from testing day to use during SVR to even how often they sound during a TOR. This has been a point of discussion at our IWT workshops between NWS/EM/Media partners here in FFCs area. In the end, there are even politic influences that come into play in some cities/counties. I agree that more needs to be done and there are tons of ways to get warnings. So, I don’t have the answer but I hope we find it. At the end of the day, and I could ramble for hours, people have to also want to take care of themselves. They turn their WEA off, unplug and take the batteries out of a NWR, don’t sign up for county mass notification systems, etc. This is an issue that I don’t see changing anytime soon, because of human nature.
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I think what matters is that we do have people talking about it, and that isn't necessarily an easy thing to get if you don't have it whenever you're dealing with literally anything that involves more than like, 3 people.
 
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