***Official 2024 Weather Thread***
- Thread starter wxman1
- Start date
I bought a backup sump pump with an external backup battery for mine. I was getting worried this year that something was wrong with it after not running for a couple years, but it's humming away fine now.
Urbandale went off as well. My in-laws live over by ryder corner and called me asking why the sirens were going off. having issues like this cause people to not trust the sirens are a legit warning.
It’s funny how people get so bent out of shape over sirens going off. The worst thing that happens is you’re extra aware and extra safe.
The people that complain about the sirens are the same people that go to the grocery store and an item doesn’t scan so they think they should get it for free.
"The sirens are going off, I better check my phone and see what's going on."
Followed by either "Oh ****, better get to shelter" or "Looks like it doesn't affect me, I'll get back to what I was doing".
Sure is a difficult concept for some people to grasp. Those 30 seconds must be pretty valuable to them.
If sirens go off when there isn’t a tornado I’m not going wake up my kids up and bring them to the basement unless I’m seeing more legit info on TV or social media. Kind of sad if you think about it that sirens are the least reliable source of information.
The primary purpose of sirens is for people who are outside and need to get to shelter. And for those people, high winds can be just as much of an overall risk as a tornado given the broader area those winds apply to.
This. People forget that the sirens are NOT designed to alert people indoors, they're for those outside.
The sirens going off for no reason caused confusion. It didn't alert anything. It went off for a minute and then stopped.
There were some high straight line winds around Winterset which would make sense for the sirens in that area. The ones in Urbandale were by mistake, which caused confusion.
Nah, the worst thing that happens is people start to ignore them as false alarms or being overly cautious, and then they're hit with a dangerous storm.
Some of the people who complain about sirens understand human behavior and know that misusing or overusing sirens without any actual severe weather following trains people to ignore them, which is actually bad.
I don’t have a sump pump
luckily our basement is at the highest point around. Our old house that was definitely a stress.If they go off when they're not supposed to I agree, but if it's just because people don't want to be warned about potentially dangerous things that aren't tornados then I disagree.
To clarify, I was not upset/annoyed that the sirens went off. I was just really confused why they were going off when I had no other warnings/notifications on my phone.
Good thing your phone alarm will blast if there is a tornado. Hard to miss.
Sirens are for people outside. Do you make your kids sleep outside? Just because you aren’t outside doesn’t mean other people aren’t. Selfish.
