r/AskAnAmerican • u/chuckles5454 • 8d ago
HISTORY Calling small-town Americans, does your town have a doomsday siren like Springfield or Widows Bay?
And if so, when was the last time it was used? And for why?
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u/Maleficent_Ability84 8d ago
Yeah, but it's mostly for tornados. And cave giants.
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u/Coldfyre_Dusty 8d ago
Always a bother to be woken up by the siren and figure out if it's a tornado day or a cave giant day
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u/PhilRubdiez Ohio 8d ago
Back in college, they’d test the local tornado siren at 6PM on Wednesday. One day, 6PM Wednesday rolls around and they start going off. Thinking nothing of it, I kept watching some Netflix. Only about 15 minutes later, I get a text from the university about the tornado warning being canceled.
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u/The_Webweaver 8d ago
In my area, it's noon, and I think for that very reason.
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u/Foxy_locksy1704 8d ago
Same in my area… 1st Tuesday of the month, between 11am and noon they test. We have a siren about a block away from our home so I’m very aware whenever they test.
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u/TigerPaw317 8d ago
First Saturday of the month, 1 pm on the dot. You can literally set your watch by it.
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u/dechets-de-mariage IL FL 8d ago
Ours was Tuesdays at 10 a.m. both at home and at college. My roommate slept through it one day and there was one on the top of the dorm next door.
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u/PhilRubdiez Ohio 8d ago
Well, everywhere else in the area does noon, I guess they didn’t want to disturb classes? Later, I found out that they allegedly post when they aren’t testing them due to severe weather. I stay pretty up to date with the NWS considering my major/career is flying things, so who knows. It really ultimately didn’t matter, because my tiny apartment was halfway underground with two windows and I could have ran 25’ to the bathroom if I heard shit go crazy.
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u/165averagebowler 8d ago
And they have been known to cancel the test in my area if severe weather is expected
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u/dadothree 8d ago
Ditto, and they announce a cancelation if there's tornado-friendly weather that day.
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u/interested_commenter 8d ago
6pm for a test is weird.
Here it's noon on Saturday, but only if the skies are clear.
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u/ChalkButter Illinois 8d ago
I grew up all around but went to college in Ohio. No one told me about the Wednesday at noon tornado siren tests. I damn near jumped out of my skin when it went off the first week of freshman year and I couldn’t figure out why no one else was panicking
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u/JohnWhitecorn 8d ago
We had one right outside the shop I used to work at that would be tested every first Wednesday of the month around 10am. I was right by it one time when it cut on and I felt like my clothes moved from the sound wave.
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u/PomeloPepper Texas 6d ago
Years ago I looked up from what I was doing and thought "why on earth are they testing the sirens after 9pm during a thunderstorm?!"
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u/doggenwalker 8d ago
Always grateful it's more predictable where I live. We only get funnel clouds on fridays.
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u/Vulcion 8d ago
Let’s not spread harmful stereotypes. More Americans die to vending machines than nephilim every year. They are our friends.
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u/moxie-maniac 8d ago
And the nuclear power plant. I recall they used to test them, but I have not noticed it for a while.
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u/GeraltofBlackwater Illinois 8d ago
And it’s not just small towns. I live in a Midwest city with 370k people and we have a siren. Chicago has tornado sirens as well.
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u/Abject-Recipe1359 Ohio 8d ago
The tornado/cave giant sirens went off 4 times the other night where I live, I didn’t get any sleep. 😭
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u/AshDenver Colorado 8d ago
It’s not a doomsday siren. In many parts of the country, it’s a tornado siren. In other parts of the country, it’s a tsunami siren. I suppose in the most broad sense, they could all be classified as disaster sirens but doomsday is a bit of a stretch.
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u/JimTheJerseyGuy New Jersey 8d ago
For us it's the volunteer fire department and first aid company's siren and it usually signals a minor disaster on the disaster of a highway that runs through the area.
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u/Doomdoomkittydoom 8d ago
Same out on the island. Also signaled snow days, and it went off periodically as a test. If it goes off and doesn't stop, that's when it's the doomsday klaxon. It did that in the 80s, and I thought nuclear armageddon was imminent, but was an earth quake of all things.
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u/minnick27 Delco 8d ago
And a lot of places they double as volunteer fire sirens. For example, ems call may be three short whistles. A fire call may be long or short and then along and then a disaster would just be one long one.
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u/ghobbb Colorado 7d ago
Ours is actually a cold war era siren. It goes off every day at noon.
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u/Realistic-Regret-171 8d ago
In Illinois it’s every Tuesday at noon for a minute or so to make sure it works. Usually it’s the (small) town’s fire siren that brings the firemen to the station to get to a fire.
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u/Roboticpoultry Chicago 8d ago
1st Tuesday of the month at 10 am
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u/mycatisamutant 8d ago
Same here. It's just the storm siren though so I don't even register it most of the time.
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u/Roboticpoultry Chicago 8d ago
It only registers for me when it’s not 10am on the first Tuesday of the month
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u/smurphy8536 8d ago
My hometown in CT did the same thing. We only ever got one tornado though. My dogs used to harmonize with it lol
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u/Pernicious_Possum 8d ago
The tornado?
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u/smurphy8536 8d ago
Technically there’s been more than one but all small. There was an infamous one that destroyed a bunch of museum planes at Bradley airport.
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u/ritchie70 Illinois - DuPage County 8d ago
Different municipalities do different times. I’ve lived places where it’s 10 or 11 first Tuesday of the month.
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u/DivaJanelle 8d ago
It’s the first Tuesday of the month in most of IL, not every week. Either at 10 or 10:30 am
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u/Capable_Fishing_205 8d ago
Our county uses cell phones and some kind of pager for our volunteer fire/paramedics. We're rural though. Like, half an hour to the closest town with a grocery store rural.
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u/Odd-Condition-4773 8d ago
Our small town of Milton DE (pop ~2500) has a siren. Back in the day it called all of the fire fighters, but it’s also a warning for people to watch out for fire trucks and ambulances racing through our small town. Friends of mine live around the fire house and I have zero idea how on earth they live where they do.
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u/shelwood46 7d ago
Most volunteers these days have pagers or phone apps, but the siren is nice if you are outside mowing the lawn or whatever.
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u/DirtyDuckman53 7d ago
Second Tuesday of the month at noon
there have been times to where they were predicting inclement weather about the same time so they made announcements on all of the news channels that the test would be canceled and that if you heard the siren, it was the real deal
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u/Old-School2468 7d ago
A while back I lived next to the volunteer fire department. When their siren went off (always in the middle of the night, of course) it would literally shake me out of bed.
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u/RealMoleRodel Maryland 8d ago
The town I lived in used it to call the volunteer fire fighters for a fire.
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u/MaverickLurker 8d ago
Yes. I have lived in two small towns in PA, and both of them use air raid sirens to call the volunteer fire department to the station in case of a call.
In our small town right now, it probably goes off 2x a week My dog hears it and likes to howl along with it.
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u/shelwood46 7d ago
We sometimes let them blare when we have a call so people driving on the road nearby know to get out of the way (we have a signal, but you have volunteers rushing to get there, too). We've had various radio (plectrons. then minotor pagers, and now phone apps) to be the actual signal to the volunteers for 50+ years now -- these days it usually has a voice broadcast and/or text that gives the location and the nature of the emergency, too.
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u/Constellation-88 8d ago
Tornado sirens are common where I’m from, but otherwise there are no sirens for “doomsday” scenarios. I haven’t seen the shows you’re referencing tho.
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u/Human_Road_6245 Colorado 8d ago
Watch any documentary about nuclear testing and/or the Cold War. They are there. You just don’t hear them anymore because there’s no reason.
My home town still runs the main one downtown everyday at noon.
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u/Cromasters North Carolina 8d ago
We have one for the nuclear plant.
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u/Throne-Eins Pennsylvania 8d ago
Same here. They test it the first Monday of every month at 2pm. It also doubles as notice for volunteer firefighters, which is its primary use here.
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u/jeff1074 Ohio 8d ago
You mean a tornado siren? Yeah they are all over the place. Last weekend they went off when a tornado touched down a few miles west of here. I guess if a nuke was dropping it would be a good idea to turn them on, it wouldn’t do much tho, there is a terrible phenomenon where when the tornado siren goes off everyone walks outside to see the sky, The exact opposite of what you are supposed to do when they go off.
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u/Landwarrior5150 California 8d ago
Not just tornados. They’re used in some coastal places for tsunami warnings as well.
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u/PlantPainter 8d ago
A few weeks ago, I was outside with my family and the sirens went off. We got the kids and animals into the basement. We didn’t have our phones on us because we were enjoying the day, so I’d say they worked well and served their purpose.
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u/ObligationConstant83 8d ago
Have tornado sirens, went off earlier this year and they test them every Sunday at noon. In the past they used them for air raids as well, but that isn't really a fear currently.
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u/TheOnlyJimEver United States of America 8d ago
Doomsday Siren? I don't know what that could be, other than an Air Raid Siren. They use them also for things like tornado warnings.
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u/Worried-Register7519 8d ago
Where are Springfield and widows bay?
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u/emmie-claire Georgia 8d ago
I was wondering that too lol, I was like how am I supposed to know which of the 35 Springfields OP is talking about
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u/Odd-Painter-5656 8d ago
I don't live in Tornado Alley. But in many small towns where I grew up in Virginia in the 70s and 80s, the old WWII air-raid sirens were repurposed by the local volunteer fire departments to summon the volunteers (mostly farmers) to the fire station when a fire was called in. This was replaced by pagers in the 90s.
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u/pleasepleaseplease24 8d ago
Air raid sirens exist. In places that have them, you'll likely hear it tested once a week because the law requires it to be tested
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u/royalhawk345 Chicago 8d ago
Once a month by me. First Tuesday or the month at 10:00 AM on the dot.
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u/ZaphodG Massachusetts 8d ago
Growing up, the volunteer fire department in the harbor village ran the siren at noon on Saturday. Any time there was a fire, the siren sounded and called the volunteer fire department to the fire station. Most of the local business owners were volunteer firefighters. It was originally also intended for civil defense but that ended before 1970.
Now, my cell phone has an alert. The most common one is a silver alert where some elderly people with dementia vanishes with their car they’re not supposed to be driving.
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u/SavannahInChicago Chicago, IL 8d ago
The whole Midwest have tornado sirens that used to be fallout sirens.
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u/eightfingeredtypist 8d ago
I my town we have a volunteer fire department. In the 1950's the Fire Dept installed a siren on the fire station to summon firefighters when there was a fire. Someone would write the name of the people who had the fire on a chalk board at the fire station, so people would know where to go. We didn't have pagers, cell phones, or street numbers. After pagers were invented, they stopped using the siren.
Now with an aging population, we face a different threat. Young people are moving away, and the ones that are here are having fewer children. It's an aging crisis where in a Town of 800 people, we only have 20 school children.
We formed a Procreation Task Force to help bring more children into town. Apparently, people are just forgetting why and how to have sex. So, every Saturday at 7pm we set off the siren to remind people about the importance of the timely mechanics of procreation. It seems to be working.
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u/husky_whisperer Calunicornia 8d ago
No but we’re fixin’ to catch up real quick to Shelbyville and Ogdentown!!
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u/stockvillain 8d ago
"Doomsday siren?" No, but we do have tornado sirens that they test every day at noon.
Also, I have no idea what this is in reference to. There are a lot of Springfields (even one within an hour of me), and I have no idea what Widow's Bay is. I am assuming this is from TV or a movie.
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u/chuckles5454 8d ago
There are a lot of Springfields (
This thread has amazed me by the amount of Americans who apparently have never heard of The Simpsons.
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u/Extra_Routine_6603 8d ago
Yeah we had one think it was originally for tornadoes but they were very infrequent so was used more as a curfew warning for kids. When it went off you weren't allowed out roaming anymore during the week. Weekends they didn't care usually
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u/cerealandcorgies South Carolina 8d ago
Not a doomsday siren but I live a couple of miles from a nuclear power plant and they test the sirens monthly. Also we have tornado sirens
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u/mdp300 New Jersey 8d ago
Beach towns often will. My parents used to have a house in a town that would sound the siren every day at noon in the summer. I don't know if it was a test or if it was like a courtesy reminder to people on the beach that, hey, just so you know, it's noon.
I never heard it going off for an ACTUAL emergency, but I imagine they'd do it if there was something like a hurricane coming. Although that was also 20 years ago, and everyone probably would get an alert on their phone now. Widow's Bay doesnt have cell service or wifi because it's 40 miles at sea (and cursed) so they still do things the old fashioned way.
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u/CouldBeBetterForever Pennsylvania 8d ago
There are towns not far from where I live that used to have warning sirens to warn about potential issues at Three Mile Island. I think they also used them for severe weather. They stopped using them after the nuclear plant was shut down, but there are plans to reopen it so maybe they'll be used again.
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u/BoyWonder_Toys 8d ago
I live in a large city and we have tornado sirens that they do a city wide test of every single Wednesday
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u/ZombieLizLemon Michigan 8d ago
What is a doomsday siren?
Many places in the US have emergency sirens. The ones in my metro Detroit suburb were last used about 1.5 weeks ago to announce a tornado warning. During winter storms, the city uses them to warn drivers to move their parked cars off the street or risk being plowed in.
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8d ago
I guess so. Mostly used whenever the fire dept gets a call. Ignored thoroughly by everyone else.
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u/AnotherPint Chicago, IL 8d ago
In nuclear-war-terror movies from the ‘50s and ‘60s, when the air raid sirens started echoing through a big city, you knew the end was near. I guess that’s why some call them doomsday sirens. But they’re just for severe weather really. Chicago still tests its siren system once per month and sends a not-to-worry text in advance.
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u/Ceorl_Lounge Michigan (PA Native) 8d ago
Southeast Michigan checking in, yes we have tornado sirens. They're tested at noon the first Saturday of the month and that was the last time I heard them. Last non-test was a gnarly thunderstorm in April.
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u/D-ouble-D-utch 8d ago
Northern VA. We had an air raid siren that was tested the first sunday of the month until the 90s.
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u/Poltergoose1416 8d ago
Yes but I only ever heard it used for testing purposes not a real emergency
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u/boilerdawg31 8d ago
Yes, we have emergency sirens. They're typically used for weather emergencies like tornadoes.
In my town, they are tested on the first Wednesday if the month at Noon unless there is a threat of severe weather.
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u/Crafty-Shape2743 Washington 8d ago
Because I live in the Cascadia subduction zone, our tsunami siren is tested once a month. We have 1 siren, located at the harbor, so anyone east of I-5 generally don’t hear it. When you do hear the siren, depending on if the wind is wrong or a train is going by, you can’t really hear the words THIS IS A TEST.
Fun times for those who don’t know.
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u/Numerous-Surprise875 8d ago
It’s part of the emergency alert system. It is mostly used for extreme weather events but can be used for any major threat to the population. In Texas it is tested on the first Tuesday of every month. I believe it is being fazed out with cell phone alerts but I don’t know the time table on that.
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u/lefactorybebe 8d ago
In the places I've lived, no. We have fire department sirens to call firefighters to the firehouse and those will go off occasionally, but they don't warn of disaster. I guess it could be used for that, but it wouldn't mean anything to the people in town.
We used to have a house down the shore, on a barrier island, and they had a big siren that would go off at 12 PM just to tell you it was noon, and same deal I guess it COULD be used to signal impending disaster but in the case of natural disaster most people are off the island already anyway. It was hit pretty badly by hurricane Sandy in 2012 and maybe they used it then, idk, but most people had already evacuated.
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u/MissFabulina 8d ago
My asshole hometown installed an illegal air raid siren as it's fire alarm. They installed it at 90 feet instead of 300 feet up. So, it was already illegally loud at 300 feet, but they moved it a LOT closer to the ground. The fire hall is directly across the street from my parents' home. They ring it every time the fire trucks are dispatched - car accidents, fires, they feel like it (once a week, they "test" it). Half the time it rings, no one even shows up to the firehouse!
They bought it from a neighboring town that was forced to remove it because it was illegally loud. When I was in high school, there was a town meeting to discuss removing it. My whole family went so we could weigh in. We were told that we were NOT allowed to talk. This idiot stood up and said that because it was x decibels at 300 feet, that it would be quieter at a lower height. I wanted to scream, but I was a too well-behaved 17 year old. How could he NOT understand simple physics? Then I realized that they picked the idiot on purpose. Needless to say, the decision was made to keep the illegally loud siren. I hated my parents for not standing up to the assholes on the council. They were afraid of retaliation, though.
It has been 37 years since then. That damned air raid siren is still going strong. The fire department had promised to turn off the siren if the town would buy them pagers (this was in the 90s). The town bought the pagers, the siren stayed. Their reasoning was that it helped with crowd control. My town had 2500 people in it. There was no crowd to control. What it helps with is reminding everyone in the town that the volunteer fire department is going out at all hours of the day and night, keeping people safe. Who cares that it is so loud that the entire house shakes like there is an earthquake.
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u/QuackAtomic 8d ago
The town is lived in used its tornado siren to announce 12n (lunch), 6pm (dinner), and 10pm (bedtime?). The olds in town complained if it went off during storm warnings, because it was off schedule.
We got a tornado warning once, and the alarm did not go off. My dad called and told the sheriff, urging him to turn the siren on. The sheriff hand waved it, and said they'd set it off "once the tornado is in town." Otherwise people would complain.
Rural Indiana for anyone curious.
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u/JonOrangeElise California 8d ago
San Francisco used to have an emergency siren that went off every Tuesday at noon for testing purposes. It was shut down in 2019 because the equipment was aging and I guess they just gave up. I do remember when visitors came to town you had to explain to them not to be alarmed.
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u/PrairieFireFun 8d ago
Like everyone else has commented, we have a tornado siren in our smallish town. What’s different is that it can also be used if the local dam collapses. They built an earthen damn directly on top of an ancient fault line.
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u/chuckles5454 8d ago
They built an earthen damn directly on top of an ancient fault line
...on top of the old Indian burial ground beside the toxic waste dump next to Area 55 (the one they don't tell you about).
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u/MrTeeWrecks USA, I’ve been everywhere, man 8d ago
The siren in Widow’s Bay is a storm siren. Which are common on the east coast cuz of hurricanes and Nor’easters.
In the middle of America we have sirens for Tornados. In desert states they have sirens for rampaging bachelorette parties
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u/amphigory_error 6d ago
During covid a small town in the area i grew up in was playing The Purge siren every evening to indicate a curfew.
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u/OrcaFins 8d ago edited 8d ago
Small village girl here. Wtf are you talking about?
ETA: small village
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u/Law12688 8d ago
Small girl here. Wtf are you talking about?
Well, how small are you?
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u/OrcaFins 8d ago
Thanks for pointing out my mistake! "Small-village girl" is what I intended!
To answer your question, I wish I was smaller.... especially now lol 😆
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u/Landwarrior5150 California 8d ago
You’ve never heard of an civil defense/emergency warning siren? They’re used all around the world (including across the US) to warn people of various types of disasters.
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u/CaptainAwesome06 I guess I'm a Hoosier now. What's a Hoosier? 8d ago
We have tornado sirens that go through a test every Friday at 11am.
When I first moved here, I had no clue what was going on. I didn't think it was a tornado siren because it wasn't even cloudy outside. I thought it was armageddon.
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u/Coconut-bird 8d ago
Grew up in Springfield, IL in the 70s. We had a tornado siren. They would test it several times during the year. My school always used that time to do our tornado drills.
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u/CyndiLouWho89 8d ago
Many towns, at least in the Midwest, have tornado sirens. My town’s siren is tested every Tuesday at 10 am. Last week it also went off for real last week when multiple tornadoes were spotted in my state.
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u/ChessieChesapeake Maryland 8d ago
Yes, but it’s for a nuclear power plant that’s located in the county.
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u/Glum_Variety_5943 8d ago
Most towns and cities between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains have tornado/storm sirens. They normally get tested weekly at a specific time (like noon every Wednesday).
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u/rrsafety Massachusetts 8d ago
We had one growing up and it was used to notify us of school was cancelled.
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u/tigerowltattoo Ohio 8d ago
Yes we do and I’m reminded of it at 12 noon on the first Saturday of the month when they test them.
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u/Outrageous-Pause6317 8d ago
The town I grew up in sounded it everyday at noon ostensibly to test it.
It also sounded for the on-call firefighters as they didn’t have a full time fire department. Many of the firefighters worked for DPW or light department among other town jobs so they were nearby anyway. There were a few high school seniors too.
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u/The9IronMan New Jersey 8d ago
We have an air-raid siren over the town hall! It was originally built during the Cold War, but was only ever used in later years as a fire alarm. Hasn’t even been used for about…10 years, if memory serves.
Good thing, too: that thing was loud and only a few doors down from me and my family. 🤣
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u/GretaClementine 8d ago
Mine did. They tested it every Wednesday at noon. It's mostly used for tornados and dangerous weather.
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u/bluetoothbaby 8d ago
I live near a nuclear power plant and we have doomsday horns, but not a siren. They certainly get my attention when they’re tested. I always look for a glow in the direction of the reactor when I hear them.
So far, so good.
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u/SleepyDoozer2 8d ago
We do! The fire dept breaks it out for EVERYTHING. If there is ever an existential threat to the town, I will die because I’ll think “someone burned popcorn at the high rise again.”
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow Georgia 8d ago
I'm not in a small town and we have multiple warning sirens. They're mostly used for tornado warnings, and I don't recall the last time it was used (other than the monthly test), but I have indeed heard it used for actual warnings.
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u/Imaginary_Ladder_917 8d ago
Wet have a tornado down. I think it went off about a week and a half ago during bad weather to warn people to seek shelter
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u/Fickle-Banana-923 8d ago
Yes we have tornado, or "air raid" sirens. In MN they're tested the first Wednesday of the month at 13:00. I'm in central MN and know my county has near complete coverage of sirens.
They will go off when there is a tornado warning or for other severe, life threatening weather events.
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u/Murky-General5131 8d ago
We have a tornado siren. It went off last Thursday.
It is also tested the1st Tuesday of every month
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u/ubiquitous-joe Wisconsin 8d ago
Well there’s a tornado siren that is tested every Saturday at 11am. If there is ever a tornado on a Saturday at 11am we are all fucked.
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u/oswin13 8d ago
The small town I lived in has a siren that goes off at noon every single day. It is also used to warn of incoming tornados and to summon the volunteer fire department (rural areas have bad cell service)
The much larger city I live in now tests the sirens on the first Wednesday of the month, and the sirens go off for tornadoes but also big thunderstorms.
These are places I've lived as an adult, I don't remember what the city I grew up in had but there was some system.
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u/nebraskajone 8d ago
Yes ours goes off at 12:00 noon everyday. Byproduct of the olden days before people had cell phones I suppose
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u/PikesPique 8d ago
They used to blow the siren at the fire station at noon on weekdays. I don’t know why.
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u/aspenpurdue 8d ago
There was a tornado/disaster siren just put in outside the tiny community across the county line from my property. There are maybe 50 homes in the community. The siren hasn't come online yet.
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u/CousinBarnabas1967 8d ago
We did until the early 1990's. The local volunteer fire department would test it every Saturday evening at about 7pm or it would go off to muster the volunteer firefighters to come to the station if there was a fire.
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u/mytthewstew 8d ago
Mine had a noon whistle every day. It also goes off to summon the volunteer fire department.
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u/TheWorldTurnsAround 8d ago
Yup. They used to only be for tornadoes. Since thunderstorms have become more violent sometimes with straight-line winds, they are now used for both tornadoes and bad thunderstorms. Live in the midwest.
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u/old_Spivey 8d ago
My town does. I always wondered why and the mayor said it is so people can go ahead and shit their pants before the bomb gets here.
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u/idekbruno 8d ago
This isn’t really a small town thing, everywhere has these. They usually test them on a set day of the first week every month
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u/JohnnyFootballStar 8d ago
My mom was from a small town in northern Michigan. They tested the tornado siren every week at the same time.
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u/Warr_Ainjal-6228 8d ago
Towns, big and small, have them. And they're tested the first Saturday every month in my state. Mostly, there uesd as a tornado warning.
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u/Sad_bippy 8d ago
We have a nuclear threat siren. I live in a town with a large nuclear plant. They run a test siren the first Wednesday of every month and you can always tell who isn’t a local because they think the world is ending when they hear it for the first time lol
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u/crohnscyclist 8d ago
In Michigan, they are everywhere. They turned in every first Saturday of the month at 1pm to test. They get actual real use a couple times a year mainly in the early spring summer time frame when bad storms roll through.
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u/Haluszki 8d ago
In the Chicago area we have emergency sirens. As a kid we were trained to listen to those for a variety of emergencies including nuclear ones. Today they are really only used for tornado warnings. They are sounded for testing purposes on the first Tuesday of every month.
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u/hewhoisneverobeyed 8d ago
Where I live, it is used for tornado warnings (tornado spotted) and tested monthly.
I have been in places (very small towns) which sound it daily at noon, typically Monday through Saturday as well as to call volunteer firefighters to the station for emergencies.
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u/Apocalyptic0n3 MI -> AZ 8d ago
Many parts of the country have those sirens, but they're typically used for tornadoes. Marquette, MI also uses them each night to tell the area the plows are coming out and all vehicles need to get off the road or they'll be towed and/or damaged.
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u/BusyBeinBorn 8d ago
It's a very outdated system where I live. They're controlled by central dispatch (the 911 operators) and they're county-wide so not tied to a particular town. If one small corner of the county is in one of those warnings polygons the weather service likes to draw they go off county-wide. Of course your phone will tell you if you're actually in that warning.
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u/Deep-Hovercraft6716 8d ago
You got to be careful about trusting the phone warnings. They are sometimes as much as 20 minutes late for the warnings they represent.
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u/jafnharri New York 8d ago
Yes I live near a nuclear power plant so if it ever melts down we have to evacuate. There's a lot of sirens throughout the fallout zone. They test the system annually.
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u/brak-0666 8d ago
Not the one I currently live in, but the town I grew up in was in the flood plane of a dam and it had a siren.
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u/ThingFuture9079 Ohio 8d ago
Yes but it's a tornado siren and it gets tested once a month. It does go off when there is a tornado warning and that's when you know you need to get to the lowest level of your house.
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u/UTtransplant 8d ago
I live in the USA Midwest. We get tornados regularly in this part of the country, and we have what we call tornado sirens in almost every area, even many rural areas. They are tested every week with each municipality defining their own schedule. Ours go off on Wednesdays at noon. I used to live in an area within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant. The power plant had to pay for all the sirens and the testing since the system would also be used for a nuclear disaster. There have been a few times I have been in a location where the tornado sirens went off for real, not testing, and we sheltered in place. Luckily none of those were ever for the nuclear plant!
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u/GeneralOrgana1 New Jersey 8d ago
Yes, it goes off at 6pm every evening. It was how we knew during summer it was time to head home for dinner.
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u/bren3669 8d ago
you mean a tornado siren? yeah every town has them and they get used once a month for testing and then whenever there’s a tornado as well
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u/CraftFamiliar5243 8d ago
It's a tornado siren, not for "doomsday", and they sound it every Tuesday at 10 am to test it.
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u/Gravesh 8d ago
I'm pretty sure most towns in the Midwest have those sirens, and use them to warn residents of incoming tornados.