6 July 2023
TOPEKA (KSNT) – When there’s severe weather in your general area, there’s a chance you might get a startling, loud-pitched alert on your phone advising you to seek shelter. Although this won’t happen for an every-other-day thunderstorm. There’s certain criteria that need to be met.
“We talk about the hazards of 80-mile-an-hour winds and or baseball-sized hail,” National Weather Service Coordinator Meteorologist, Chad Omitt said. “So, if there’s a warning that includes one of the two of those, 80-mile-an-hour winds or baseball-sized hail, you’ll receive a wireless emergency alert for that warning.”
When that criteria is met while tracking the weather, that’s when meteorologists at the National Weather Service here in Topeka will work on getting alerts out to the public.
“When we select those features within the warning, those will trigger the WEA alert,” National Weather Service Meteorologist, Nathan Griesemer said. “So, we’re not actually sending that out here, we’re sending out the warning that will activate the WEA.”
As for Tuesday night, it wasn’t baseball-sized hail that triggered the alert, but the high winds.
“Last night’s system was more along kind of a wind event, so we’re kind of looking at upper parts in the storm seeing what the winds are like up at higher levels,” Griesemer said.
If you get one of these alerts, Omitt says you shouldn’t take them with a grain of salt.
“If you receive that warning take it seriously, move indoors, get into a sturdy shelter of some kind and I think that’s the most important thing to remember, take them seriously,” Omitt said.
Severe storms and tornados aren’t the only time you can receive these alerts. Omitt says you can also receive serious flash flood warnings and rarely for snow.