(Spirit Lake)– Severe Weather Awareness Week continues in Iowa with today’s (Wed.) emphasis on preparedness. Dickinson County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Ehret says it’s important to have multiple ways of receiving watches and warnings…
“There’s the traditional means that have always been around: the tv stations, the radio stations. You guys are very good at doing the wall to wall coverage when we have severe weather coming through, so that’s an excellent place to get up to the second information with weather. If you’re not by a tv or radio of course most everybody’s got a cell phone. There’s a whole myriad of apps out there that will give you weather alerts. We have our Dickinson Alert system here in the county. It’s free to sign up. You can get text messages and emails when weather alerts are issued. You can sign up for that by going to the website dcem.us.”
And a reminder of the statewide tornado drill coming up at 10:00 am this (Wed.) morning. Ehret says sirens throughout the area will be going off at the time as part of the exercise. He reminds us of the protocol in Dickinson county when it comes to sounding outdoor warning sirens for severe weather…
“If you’ve ever gotten those WEA alerts, those wireless emergency alerts on your cell phone, a lot of times those come out for Amber Alerts but they do also come out for particular warnings. All tornado warnings, higher end flash flood warnings, and then also severe thunderstorm warnings if it contains winds of 80 mph or stronger and/or baseball size hail. You’ll get that WEA alert on your phone, it’s that really annoying sound but it’s a good sound to alert you. We opted a couple of years ago, we wanted to follow that same criteria. So to sound the sirens in Dickinson county there’s got to be a tornado warning or a tornado spotted by a trained spotter or a severe thunderstorm that has those 80 mph winds and/or baseball size hail. Anyone of those criteria will trip the sirens here in the county.”
Ehret also reminds everyone that outdoor warning sirens are just that: they are intended to warn those who are outside when severe weather threatens. He says unless you live next to one, chances are you won’t hear it going off in your home or business.
