There’s already been some discussion of this on-going installation in the Free-For-All Friday comments, but here’s a bit more detail about the location of these new, city-run tornado sirens.  From the Decatur Minute…

There is a siren for each quadrant of the City. In addition to the one located on Agnes Scott’s campus, the others are located at Westchester, Oakhurst Elementary, Winnona Park Elementary, and Glennwood Academy. In the event that the National Weather Services issues a tornado warning for the Decatur area, the Decatur Police Communications Center will sound the siren for three to five minutes per issued warning. During the sounding, the siren head will rotate.

The City will conduct a test of the system at 3 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month.

According to InDecatur and a comment by Rachel in a previous post, Decatur hit the tornado siren twice this afternoon as storms descended upon the city.

The wife and I were OTP at the time, so we didn’t hear anything. The dog still isn’t speaking to me.

Isn’t it interesting how when there WAS a tornado last night within a couple miles of town we never got the siren warning? I had no clue about it until 11:15p when my Dad called me from Connecticut. That’s twice that my parents in the Northeast knew about severe weather in Decatur before I did.

I’m not placing blame, it just shows how unpredictable twisters can be. That and how TV, the internet and free long distance has made the world a very small place.

UPDATE: The AJC reports that downtown got an 8 minute warning from the National Weather Service before the tornado hit.  Additionally, the article notes that downtown Atlanta doesn’t even have a tornado siren.  So, Decatur is at least one step ahead of Atlanta in that regard.