Experts say tornado sirens shouldn’t be your only source of warning

ARTESIA, Miss. (WCBI) — April in Mississippi usually means flowers blooming and severe weather. Although you aren’t supposed to rely on tornado sirens, many people do.

Severe storms have swept across Mississippi two weekends in a row. This means it’s important to know how to get a warning and when to take shelter.

In Artesia, the town’s tornado siren is broken.

“The tornado siren is actually not working right now. It is one of the oldest sirens and initially, we were trying to find parts to repair the siren, but you know with it being the oldest siren. The siren came in the later part of the ’90s and with it being the oldest siren, we thought it would be best to go ahead and get a new siren,” said Cindy Lawrence, the Lowndes County EMA Director.

Lawrence has met with Artesia’s mayor and is the process of getting a new, functioning siren.

“With COVID 19 and all the things that are going on, I do not know the exact date that we will be able to get the siren installed,” said Lawrence. “We are hoping to have it completed at least by the end of May.”

Even without that alert, WCBI Meteorologist Trevor Birchett said there are still ways you can find out when a possible tornado is approaching.

“A great way to actually stay informed about severe weather is actually a weather radio. They are about $30 at Kroger or any grocery store and you can set them to go off for whenever your county is put under a warning and we always say it’s a great thing to have multiple ways to get your weather alerts because one can always go out and especially with those tornado sirens, they are meant to be heard out outdoors,” said Birchett.

Although Artesia doesn’t have a storm shelter, there are several ways to find out where you and your family can ride out a storm safely.

“We’ve got plenty of community storm shelters around our area. Our local municipalities have done a great job at building those local shelters with grants from FEMA, we’ve actually got a list of those on our website,” said Birchett.”You can go there and find where the closest one there is to you, that’s always a good bet.”

It’s just as important to know where you should and shouldn’t be when there is severe weather.

“Where you don’t want to be is in a mobile home or in a car, its a better bet to just find a restaurant or a gas station to get inside as opposed to being in one of those,” said Birchett.

Of course, the WCBI app has all the weather information that you need. When there is a tornado warning in our area, you can also find our meteorologists here on-air, on the radio and on Facebook.