A “likely tornado” hit a Chicago suburb during severe storms earlier this week, but no siren ever sounded in the area, leaving residents wondering: what happened?
Forecasters said the possible touchdown took place in Huntley, though assessors have not yet confirmed the touchdown or the strength.
Residents noted that no sirens ever sounded in the area, despite the severe weather outbreak that accompanied the likely tornado.
Huntley Police Chief Linda Hooten said the sirens are linked to weather feeds triggered by alerts sent out by the National Weather Service.
“When NWS issues a tornado warning, they create a polygon shape for the area included in the warning. That polygon shape is automatically overlaid on a map of our early warning siren locations. If the polygon touches the location of one of our siren locations on the map, it will automatically trigger our sirens to activate,” Hooten told NBC Chicago.
Hooten said no tornado warning was issued for the Huntley area Wednesday night, therefore the sirens did not activate.
“We also have the ability to activate the early warning sirens manually at the police department and dispatch center. The sirens were not manually activated because there was no tornado warning issued for Huntley, we did not receive any reports of a tornado or funnel cloud from a trained weather spotter and did not receive any other information from NWS sites that would lead us to activate the sirens,” Hooten said.
A warning was issued nearby around 6:08 p.m. in northeastern Kane County and northwestern Cook County. Sirens sounded in Elgin and the surrounding areas, but by that time the storm system had already passed Huntley, Hooten said.
According to Ricky Castro, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Chicago, several factors go into issuing a warning, with longevity and confidence in a tornadic storm among them.
“The possibility was there that there could be something brief but the potential for a strong destructive tornado was just not there environment-wise,” Castro told NBC Chicago, noting that warnings often impact a much larger region than just the area where a storm is located and create a “downstream effect.”
Castro said the storm that hit Huntley was a “low end of the spectrum, weaker tornado” and a severe thunderstorm warning had been issued around the same time which “mentioned the possibility of a tornado.”
In fact, according to Castro, the severe thunderstorms were more damaging than the suspected tornado. Straight line winds of up to 70 mph led to downed trees and power lines and a trail of damage in the Bartlett area as well.
“It also kind of underscores the importance of not necessarily relying on a tornado warning,” Castro said. “If you get any warning, have multiple ways to get those warnings and treat them similarly. If you get a severe thunderstorm warning get away from trees and windows.”
The way tornado sirens work is dependent on the city or county where they are located.
“Tornado sirens, with the policies possibly varying from location to location, you’re not going to be able to say, ‘OK my area is absolutely under an imminent threat,'” Castro said. “Not to say it’s not a part of the process that can be important. There’s some variance, there’s some, I guess you could say, flaws. There’s a little bit of subjectivity that goes into it … ultimately having an idea of what to expect on any given day and when threatening weather approaches the main actions to take don’t change much in a case when the environment isn’t expected to produce strong tornadoes. The actions are actually pretty similar that are effective in terms of keeping yourself safe.”
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