Lewisville Whelens

[kswx29]

Start around 6:28
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-YtnXF3Eg4

[Travis]

Interesting that they actually used alert. Usually its whoop, which sounds much more spooky during an actual emergency such as this.

[bwillcox]

Every time I've actually heard the Vortexes for the real thing, it's always been in alert, but I suppose its whatever button that gets punched on the encoder at dispatch. Lewisville is not shy about using the sirens when needed either.

As long as the sirens spring to life and make lots of noise on demand, that's all that matters.

I was out spotting on this one. Got some pretty good sized hail (dime to quarter sized) and then the funnel cloud. It would not have been a massive tornado, but when its blocks from where you call home, its too close.

Could be round 2 tomorrow.

[Travis]

Every time I've actually heard the Vortexes for the real thing, it's always been in alert, but I suppose its whatever button that gets punched on the encoder at dispatch. Lewisville is not shy about using the sirens when needed either.

As long as the sirens spring to life and make lots of noise on demand, that's all that matters.

I was out spotting on this one. Got some pretty good sized hail (dime to quarter sized) and then the funnel cloud. It would not have been a massive tornado, but when its blocks from where you call home, its too close.

Could be round 2 tomorrow.

This is true. I think that they just go back and hit buttons until they hear the sirens. (obviously the asst. chief/EMA director isn't there so I wouldn't be surprised if they just asked admin to do it or even one of the firefighters.)

We had a lovely ground stop at DFW which made 1 or 3000 people very happy.