Tornado Siren Goes Off For Flash Flood?
Decatur Metro | September 21, 2009Quite a night.
Between the dog freaking-out, a river in the basement, late-night calls from Code Red, and some pretty savage lightning, I’m just a bit groggy this morning.
And what was with that siren? Altmod echos my confusion…
Do the sirens go off for “flash flood” as well because that was the only active alert in effect while the sirens were going off. When I hear the sirens I always freak out thinking tornado.
Assuming this was Agnes Scott’s siren, perhaps they would be willing to clarify.
UPDATE: NTDecatur tweeted this in the midst of the chaos last night:
The ASC siren is for a severe thunderstorm warning. Please RT.
UPDATE II: Follow the flood story on Twitter here.
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I heard it too, and am pretty sure that it said “flash flood warning” in between the two rounds of siren.
Hum, that must have been what woke me up. Here I thought it was all the blinding lightening and deafening thunder.
Well, at least that means you got to sleep. Rain turned on motion sensor lights filling bedroom with unearthly glow. Thunder and lightning so intense, thought they were filming a war scene in Decatur, and I’d look out to see the trucks and trailers on our street.
4 inches of rain in our basement. When will it end???!!!!
Garage flooded, roof leaking, whole house smells musty. Sigh.
I didn’t hear the sirens– all I heard was the booming thunder (our power kept flickering off & on most of the night). Newly-appeared water marks on our ceiling indicate roof is leaking aomewhere. *sigh* On the bright side, we don’t have a basement, so that’s one less thing to be flooded…DM, heartfelt sympathies go out to you & everybody else whose homes have suffered adverse effects from these rains. I feel so conflicted– on one hand, I feel guilty for wanting to complain b/c of the prolonged drought we just came out of; on the other, man, am I ready for the rain to stop!
Don’t severe thunderstorms provide their own warning?
We live in the ponce heights area, and did hear the warning siren, but not the announcement of the flash flood … pulled the kids out of bed, (teenagers, no small feat!) and ran down into our …flooded basement. Sigh. Please tell me when the ark will be finished. (and I’m REALLY CRANKY this a.m.)
Went from a lightning-studded night w/ torrential rains in Decatur to violent thunderstorms in Kennesaw this morning. Maybe i’m carrying this storm around with me?
The lighting or storm or something messed up my home alarm, which prompted a call from the alarm company and then a reboot process. This happened about the same time the sirens went off. Maybe the sirens could have been triggered in a similar fashion.
We live very close to the sirens and could hear what the robo siren man said. It was for flash floods and told us to seek higher ground.
The siren definitely came AFTER the big storm at our house. I had just gotten my scaredy daughter back to sleep and then she woke up again when the siren went off. She has an intensely sensitive monitor for the tornado siren and can pick it up from as far away as North Carolina. Didn’t realize there was a robo siren man. I thought it was our neighbors enjoying the outside display. Next time, I’ll try to listen more carefully but I think robo siren man isn’t quite distinct enough for the northside.
The siren, at least for now, is controlled by Agnes Scott and their Public Safety department decides when to activate it. The City has contracted for a city-wide siren warning system and intends to coordinate with ASC.
Does anyone know whether any of the rivers/creeks cited in the AJC as potential flood problems are connected to Shoal Creek?
I live next to the Creek and wonder how the larger rivers impact the potential for it to flood tonight. It came awful close last night but didn’t crest. Still I have a flooded basement from groundwater seeping in.
Everytime the thunder pealed, all our dogs went STRAIGHT UP IN THE AIR, HOWLING!
Needless to say, I am also grumpier than usual today. In addition to all the thunder, my skyrocketing canines and the lightening, I couldn’t sleep for fear of yet ANOTHER tree falling….
How many creeks run through Decatur? Do they have names?
I’ll bet the City Engineer could tell you every one and where it is. He’s probably been out to every one several times in the past few days.
Or you could just simply look at the city’s floodplain map:
http://www.decaturga.com/client_resources/cgs/citysvcs/eng/floodplain_lomr1.pdf
Even better ! Why didn’t I think of that?
The sirens were definitely not necessary. I heard them and immediately thought tornado. How much of a genius does it take to realize when it rains for a week straight there will be flooding or when thunder rattles your windows it’s severe. I suppose if the siren blowers did nothing people would be peeved also, losing scenario either way.
Side note, it was an odd sounding siren this time.
I am just thankful we have the siren at all. The Agnes Scott siren has been the only one in Decatur for years. We would not be getting new sirens for the city, either, if it had not been for that siren prompting the discussion.
Who do we write to complain about the siren? I’m all for it going off in the event of a tornado or zombie infestation, but losing sleep over a thunderstorm/flood warning seems a bit much.
It was probably a misuse of the siren, considering all the ASC students followed established protocol and went to the basement. Not the place to be during a flood!
Hmm. Good point. We could hear the siren but not the robo man so we thought about going to the basement too. But the storm had clearly already passed so we ignored it. I guess we would have been in trouble if it was the quiet eye of a hurricane. When I was growing up, firehorns had different patterns for different neighborhoods so you could tell where the fire was. Maybe we need different sounds or patterns for different types of disasters.
That’s a great idea, Snowflake! Let’s see..a loud foghorn-type blast for flash floods, a claxon wail for tornadoes, European-type police sirens for earthquakes, and recorded shrieks of terror for zombies. I think that about covers it.
Seriously, I do think different sound patterns for different situations is a good idea– wasn’t joking about that.
The good folks at ASC are looking into getting us an explanation on this. Stay tuned.