Sirens didn’t sound for JoCo tornado, but did for clear skies in KC. Who controls them?
Storm clouds have been rolling through Kansas City for weeks, bringing heavy rain, destructive wind and even small tornadoes. But some residents of the metro have noticed discrepancies in when tornado watches, warnings and sirens are deployed to alert them to incoming severe weather.
On Tuesday afternoon, a short burst of rain and wind gave way to clear skies — and then tornado sirens sounded in parts of Kansas City where the sun was already shining.
Just a few days earlier, Sunday night’s stormy conditions created at least two small tornadoes in Johnson County. But residents were never sent a tornado warning, or even a less-serious tornado watch.
Some took to social media to discuss the confusing messaging — including the National Weather Service’s Kansas City office.
“We are aware that sirens are sounding in some places across the KC Metro,” the office posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Tuesday afternoon. “Storms have moved out of Platte, Clay, Johnson (KS), Wyandotte (KS), Leavenworth (KS), and there are no warnings in effect for Jackson County. The only Tornado Warning is for southern Cass County.”
So who sends out tornado watches and warnings, and are they the same people who activate tornado sirens in your community? With more severe weather predicted for this weekend, here’s a closer look at why these alerts don’t always match up with the conditions in your area.
Who controls the tornado sirens in the Kansas City area?
Tornado warning sirens are controlled by the emergency management divisions of the cities and counties where they’re located. The Kansas City Fire Department controls the sirens within Kansas City limits, while county officials oversee the rest of each neighboring county.
Sometimes, smaller cities within counties have the power to activate their own tornado sirens. For example, Johnson County’s emergency management department controls all 190 sirens in the county — but the cities of Olathe, Lenexa and Overland Park can also activate their own sirens if they choose to do so.
The protocol to activate tornado sirens can vary based on who controls them — but most emergency management offices take their cues from tornado warnings issued by the National Weather Service.
“For all practical purposes, we only sound the sirens when the NWS instructs us to,” said KCFD spokesperson Michael Hopkins. The fire department will also activate sirens when a trained severe weather spotter reports a funnel cloud or tornado that could impact any part of Kansas City.
“The critical word here is ‘could,’” Hopkins said via email. “If a tornado has touched down in Olathe and is moving northeast, that ‘could’ affect KCMO.”
The KCFD is able to choose which tornado sirens to activate by county — but can also sound them throughout the city. That’s what happened on Tuesday by accident.
“While activating the tornado warning system for Cass county, a KCFD dispatcher inadvertently hit the citywide alert,” the department said in a written statement that afternoon. “There was no threat anywhere other than Cass county. KCFD apologies for this inadvertent error, and any confusion it may have caused.”
Johnson County has similar rules for activating tornado sirens — its emergency management division will do so when a tornado is reported by a trained storm spotter, a trained public safety official or the National Weather Service.
County emergency manager Trenton Pittman told The Star that those criteria weren’t met Sunday night when strong winds formed at least two small tornadoes in Shawnee and Prairie Village. Therefore, the county did not activate any of its tornado sirens.
“The Johnson County Emergency Operations Center … was in position to activate the outdoor warning sirens should the criteria have been met Sunday night,” Pittman said in an email. “Throughout the evening we were in frequent contact with the NWS as well as storm spotters from across the county.”
He added that it wasn’t until Monday that emergency managers concluded some of the wind damage in the county was caused by small tornadoes, rather than purely by straight-line wind.
Who issues severe weather warnings and watches?
The National Weather Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has 122 regional offices around the country that monitor local weather.
But there’s also a centrally located office called the Storm Prediction Center that tracks weather patterns across the country. Back in the ‘90s, that office was located right here in Kansas City. Today, it’s in Oklahoma.
The Storm Prediction Center is the main office responsible for severe weather watches. A watch implies that the conditions needed to create severe weather exist, even if the weather event isn’t actually happening yet.
Those conditions include a significant temperature difference between ground-level air and air higher up in the atmosphere, said Brad Temeyer, a Kansas City meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
“We’re looking for (temperature) instability combined with wind shear, which allows the storms to organize in a fashion where they can produce severe weather,” he said.
Wind shear occurs when wind is traveling at different speeds within the same column of air.
When conditions are right for a watch to be issued, the Storm Prediction Center contacts the regional offices whose areas may be impacted. These offices can then issue severe weather watches to entire counties at the direction of the Storm Prediction Center.
Watches can be issued for high wind, severe thunderstorms, winter storms, freezes, fire weather, excessive heat, tornadoes, tropical storms and hurricanes, as well as river, coastal and inland flooding.
Severe weather warnings, on the other hand, are issued directly by regional weather offices like the National Weather Service’s Kansas City regional office in Pleasant Hill. Unlike severe weather watches, which cover entire counties, severe weather warnings can be targeted to more specific areas.
“If we feel that there’s a storm that has reached severe limits, we’re going to issue that warning, regardless of whether there’s a watch in place or not,” Temeyer said. “There (are) three criteria that we’ll issue a warning for: 58 mile per hour winds or greater, hail 1 inch in diameter or greater, and tornadoes.”
The first two conditions would lead to a severe thunderstorm warning, while a tornado sighting would lead to a tornado warning. This sighting may be reported by an NWS expert, a local government official or even a member of the public. The office then verifies the wind movement at that location using radar mapping and makes the call about whether to issue a warning.
Temeyer added that on Sunday night, the office decided to issue a warning for strong winds rather than for tornadoes in Johnson County. That’s because the office didn’t have enough evidence that night that strong winds in the area were curling into low-grade tornadoes, called quasi-linear convective system tornadoes.
It wasn’t until experts analyzed the damage in Johnson County the next day that they concluded a few of these tornadoes did indeed form.
“It’s always a balance for us on whether you issue the warning or not,” Temeyer said. “Just over the metro, you’re going to put thousands if not millions of people in a warning, and very few people are going to be impacted.
“The radar operator decided that the warning for strong damaging winds, at that point was the best warning to put out.”
How can I help make severe weather reporting more accurate?
The National Weather Service’s local office considers reports from people on the ground when deciding whether to issue a severe weather warning. These reports can take the form of a phone call, email or even a social media message.
“We’re constantly getting reports from the public in different fashions, and we use that information in our warning process to make a determination,” Temeyer said.
To report severe weather conditions over the phone, you can call the office at 816-540-6021.
You can also submit a storm report online or email the office at nws.kansascity@noaa.gov. The office is also active on Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter.
While the NWS takes reports from anyone, your local county or city emergency operations center may also base its decision to activate tornado sirens on reports from trained storm spotters.
The good news for weather enthusiasts: Members of the public can sign up for this specialized volunteer role.
“In the springtime, we go out and we teach people in the field,” Temeyer said. “We teach them how to spot storms and how to keep themselves safe, but (also) to get a sense of what’s going on… and then they relay that information back to us.”
While this year’s trainings have already been completed, he urged interested residents to reach out to their county or city’s emergency managers to get on the list for next year.
Do you have more questions about severe weather in Kansas or Missouri? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com.
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