Name: Weather Service accidentally triggers tornado warning in multiple states under clear skies
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Weather Service accidentally triggers tornado warning in multiple states under clear skies

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This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoCommentGift ShareCellphones across parts of Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas screeched with an emergency alert on Tuesday, urging residents to take shelter due to an approaching tornado and warning of “flying debris.”The alert, which may have triggered more than a million cellphones to wail, advised of a tornado warning that the National Weather Service issued. “Tornado warning” was trending on Twitter at midmorning Tuesday.The problem? The warning was a test and was never meant to alert cellphones.“Take shelter now in a basement or an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building,” read the bulletin, which was picked up and distributed to cellphones through wireless emergency alerts.Some tornado sirens sounding following the message.then say it’s a drill next time. My apartment complex is all in the hallways right now confused.— Tornado “Drill” (@aunrecognizable)Not only was there no tornado, but there was hardly even a cloud in the sky. Yet many people were confused by the message, with some even heading for shelter. It quickly became apparent that a malfunction had occurred in the dissemination software associated with the emergency alert system.AdvertisementWeather Service offices in Wichita and Topeka, Kan., Kansas City, Springfield, Mo., and St. Louis were among those whose test messages appear to have been sent out to the public via wireless alerts. The warning went out around 10 a.m. Central time.According to National Weather Service spokeswoman Susan Buchanan, the agency’s computer code accidentally triggered the issuance of a wireless emergency alert.“A test of our tornado warning system today as part of Severe Weather Awareness Week was not intended to be broadcast as a Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA),” she said in a statement.“The new code for our Common Alerting Protocol Handler, implemented last week, mistakenly allowed the test to go out over WEA as an actual warning. The software was fixed immediately.”When this WEA alert was issued, there was no wording indicating this was a test Tornado Warning. We have started an investigation into why the WEA system was activated. We sincerely apologize for any confusion.— NWS Wichita (@NWSWichita)“The alert itself said absolutely nothing about it being a drill,” Gavin Fritton, a lawyer in Johnson County, Kan., wrote in a Twitter direct message. “I didn’t freak out or anything, but … my radio started blowing up with the same alert.”AdvertisementFritton said he and his mother survived a tornado that leveled their home when he was a newborn some 55 years ago, and since then, his mother has been terrified of tornadoes.“My entire youth was spent with her reacting, let’s say ‘VERY strongly,’ whenever the tornado sirens would blare,” Fritton wrote. “I was more concerned for people like her … who might have taken it very seriously.”Others were startled by the alert, too, since many tornado-weary residents are conditioned to shelter at the first sign of trouble.“Living in Jefferson City [Missouri] and having gone through a tornado a few years ago, it could cause people who didn’t know about the drill a sense of panic,” wrote Chris Till, a volunteer firefighter and EMT student in Kansas City, in a Twitter direct message.Some people heeded the warning’s advice and sought shelter, like Jordan Martin, a graduate student at Kansas State University.There has been confusion this morning with our test of the tornado warning system as part of the tornado drill. There was a malfunction between the NWS &amp; the Weather Emergency Alert (WEA) system. The test warning should have not activated WEA. We apologize for the inconvenience.— NWS St. Louis (@NWSStLouis)“I was in a meeting working from home,” he wrote. “My desk is right near some pretty large windows, so I was definitely scared that if a tornado came through, I’d be in danger. I left my condo and went to a central stairwell in the building and got numerous emails from Kansas State University, where I attend, saying to take shelter, so I was pretty sure it was real.”AdvertisementConditions in Kansas City at the time sunny and dry with temperatures in the 50s.It was unclear what caused the test message to be disseminated by the emergency alert system as if it were the real thing. Andy Bailey, a warning coordination meteorologist at the Weather Service in Kansas City, explained that the test alerts are issued once per year during severe weather awareness week, which falls during the spring.“We don’t know where the breakdown was,” Bailey said. “We issued a test tornado message, following the test protocol, somewhere above us in the chain this was misinterpreted as an actual tornado warning.”The Washington Post was able to confirm that the test messages from the various offices appeared to be coded correctly following the procedure for a test message. Weather alerts have a valid time extent code, which communicates to automated systems the time frame the alert is valid for and what actions to take. Test messages have a “/T.” at the lead of their VTEC, while operational messages begin with an “/O.”AdvertisementThat points to an error with the dissemination software.New software implemented last week mistakenly allowed the test to go out over WEA as an actual warning. The software is fixed.(For reference: ) — National Weather Service (@NWS)“What appears on cell phones is beyond our control,” the National Weather Service in Wichita.The Weather Service in Topeka tweeted, “We will work w/ FEMA to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”This is not the first time that test alerts have been mistakenly blasted out to the public. A test tornado warning on March 4, 2013, was accidentally , and prompted alerts in Sullivan, Wis. Several were sent to the public in the Mid-Atlantic in October 2011.Those alerts came before the era of wireless emergency alerts or widespread handheld smartphones.An even went out to AccuWeather customers in 2018 indicating a tsunami was en route to Florida.And on Jan. 13, 2018, residents of Hawaii received an erroneous emergency alert that read “ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii,” followed by, “this is not a drill.”It was, in fact, a drill. CommentsGift Article2022 Heat TrackerAverage Year-To-Date39Yearly Average40Record Most67 (1980,2010)Record Fewest7 (1886,1905)Last Year48TOP STORIESDeep DivesMake time for stories that embrace nuance and complexity. Some will break your heart, others will enlighten you.Try a different topic or to save your preferences

This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoCommentGift ShareCellphones across parts of Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas screeched with an emergency alert on Tuesday, urging residents to take shelter due to an approaching tornado and warning of “flying debris.”The alert, which may have triggered more than a million cellphones to wail, advised of a tornado warning that the National Weather Service issued. “Tornado warning” was trending on Twitter at midmorning Tuesday.The problem? The warning was a test and was never meant to alert cellphones.“Take shelter now in a basement or an...

Weather Service accidentally triggers tornado warning in multiple states under clear skies

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