Northwest Iowa — This is Severe Weather Awareness Week in Iowa. Each day this week the National Weather Service is focusing on a different severe weather topic.
The topic today is weather warnings, and how they are received. The National Weather Service says that one of the most important precautions you can take to protect yourself and your family from severe weather is to remain weather aware. Being weather aware means you are informed of the weather forecast and alert to the potential hazards.
Warning Coordination Meteorologist Peter Rogers with the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls says two of the products they issue in relation to severe weather both start with “w,” but that’s where the similarities end.
(as said:)”For a watch, a severe thunderstorm watch or tornado watch means that conditions are favorable for those hazards to occur, but they’re not yet happening. So a watch basically means we want people to start paying attention to what’s going on around them, to start looking at additional weather information to make sure that by that time that their severe weather plans are in place and they’re ready to take action. By the time a warning is issued, that means that something is actually occurring or will be very shortly. And so that’s the time we want people to enact those severe weather safety plans, seek shelter immediately, and get out of harm’s way.”
Rogers says you should always have multiple ways of being alerted to a warning. Don’t just rely on the tornado sirens, which you may, or may not hear. Emergency management officials advise that the outdoor warning sirens are really only to let people outdoors know about severe weather. And if you’re inside, or traveling down the road, we suggest you listen to our comprehensive severe weather coverage on KIWA.
The focus on Wednesday is tornadoes. Last year the test was canceled due to coronavirus concerns of making people gather in small spaces for tornado drills. When the sirens go off on Wednesday, Weather Service officials say you should practice your plan and talk with your family about what should be done in the event of a tornado.
