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Join the Laclede County OEM and the National Weather Service during Severe Weather Awareness Week to promote Severe Weather Safety
State & Local emergency management and the National Weather Service (NWS) will conduct a Statewide Severe Weather Tornado Drill at 1:30 PM, THURSDAY MARCH 11TH, 2010. Every school, citizen and business is encouraged to participate in the drill by practicing seeking secure, save shelter from a "tornado".
The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has granted a waiver to the state of Missouri. The National Weather Service will be allowed to use the actual Emergency Alert System (EAS) code T O R for the tornado drill message. This means that NOAA Weather Radios that are set to receive the TOR code will activate for the test tornado warning. The commercial broadcast industry should be prepared to receive a TOR coded message for the drill.
Local officials may sound warning sirens to initiate the drill. Area residents, businesses, and schools are urged to treat the drill as if it were an actual tornado emergency. The purpose of the annual drill is to test everyone’s readiness for life-threatening severe weather events such as tornadoes, flash floods, large hail, and damaging winds.
The Missouri Ozarks and extreme southeast Kansas experience a variety of severe weather including tornadoes, severe thunderstorms with damaging winds and large hail, and flash flooding. Residents are encouraged to use this week, and the annual test day, to review their severe weather safety plans. Practice what you would do in a real tornado emergency.
For more information on severe weather or emergency management, please visit http://www.crh.noaa.gov/sgf/?n=severeweatherawareness and http://www.lacledeoem.net .