quote:
Originally posted by bugo
I'm at 51st and Lewis. There was absolutely no danger to this area. The storm was tracking east-northeast, and had shown no signs of a sudden shift to the south-southeast which it would have had to have done to reach downtown, much less the southern parts of midtown. And, had the storm taken a sudden right hand turn and headed this way, there was plenty of time for the NWS to modify the tornado warning.
The only effect the sirens had going off was to disturb and terrify residents of an area that was in no danger whatsoever.
When the warning was issued, the storm was still in Creek County west of Sapulpa. Last I checked, that's quite far south of midtown. Yes, it was moving northeast and was turning more northerly, but it wasn't a foregone conclusion at the time the warning was issued.
Our local weather stations are often 5 minutes or more behind on relaying warnings to the public, even when they're in full "stormgasm" mode. Only on rare occasions do they beat my feed.
Again, it may be that the City just doesn't have the control over the sirens needed to only blow them north of, say, 31st street and not south of there. I don't know. I do know that I wouldn't have issued the warning all the way south to 51st street, but probably would have issued it to 31st or 21st were I in their shoes. It may not have made a lick of difference to which sirens the City ended up activating, as they may have had no choice if they wanted to activate them in the warned areas.