Haven't looked at the news yet, but the sirens are going off and telling people to seek shelter immediately. This is in Jefferson City.

EDIT: Tornado Alert just sounded on my phone.

Tornado warning until 5:45 PM. Had heavy winds for about 15 min. Now, just heavy rain and wind is at a minimum.

Every home and workplace should be equipped with at least one of these: http://www.weatherconnection.com/subcategory.asp?cat=1&subcat=404583

The S.A.M.E. technology allows you to program your radio so it only goes off for alerts in your immediate area and only for the weather/disaster events that you choose to receive alerts about. I'll tell you what, NOTHING will wake you up faster than that radio going off in the middle of the night.

FWIW, I have the Midland WR300 at home and at work. It's about $50 anywhere weather radios are sold.

BIG difference between a Tornado sounded siren and an Air Raid sounded siren.

The best way I can describe the difference is a Tornado siren sound is a steady continuous wail where as an Air Raid siren sound rises and falls in sound. Think the back ground siren in Black Sabbaths "War Pigs".  

Funny story (now it is)

In 1987 the Police / Fire Communications center moved to it's new location.

At 09:30 on every Monday they test the "Tornado Sirens".

I'm in a meeting and the sirens go on, no biggie. It's Monday 09:30.

Then they start rising and falling.........OH FUCK!!!!

I know that DOD Regulations do not allow testing of the Air Raid signal.

Yet, it's on! I switch to the MRTI radio / telephone on my portable radio and TRY to call the Comm Center. They have 12 911 lines, THEY WERE ALL BUSY!

My wife was working F1 Police frequency that day. Finally I get through to one of the dispatchers.

I'm told, it's a mistake and they can't shut it down....at this point it's been running for 25 minutes CONTINUOUS.

Come to find out the Comm Center Supervisor accidentally turned it on and didn't know how to stop it.

Panicked an Air Guard Base, an Army Reserve unit, and an Army National Guard unit. (And Me)

LOL....no kidding...I was like..what?  Germany has been out of the game for a while now

Just using the Internets description.


A civil defense siren (also colloquially referred to as an air raid or tornado siren)

What I hate is the fact that the town I live in uses the storm sirens to call in the fire department for every little thing (instead of phones/pagers/radios). Half the time I catch myself reaching for my gas mask and protective gear when the sirens go off.

I got that too. Normally when I hear there's a bad storm coming, I go outside and watch, but since young grand kids live here now I decided it would be... inappropriate this time. I was just about to go outside, when my SIL tells the kids to stay inside. Since the youngest one and I do stuff together a lot, he'd have wanted to go with me, so I stayed in and missed it.



 

How bad was / is it by you?  Had heavy rain and winds here. With rain this am.

Same here; rain/wind/lightning. It's done it a couple rounds today too.

Glad you didn't get hit with anything. Has been raining off and on all day. No wind at all.