Outdoor Warning Siren Information

It has been the policy of Waseca County to only activate the sirens in the cities affected or potentially affected by the projected movement of the severe weather threat. The primary threat that sirens are activated are for tornado warnings (both sighted and radar indicated), funnel clouds, rotating wall clouds approaching or over a city, and straight-line winds (downbursts) in excess of 75 miles per hour.

In Waseca County, all outdoor warning sirens are owned and maintained by the cities. If a siren is not working, please contact your city hall and let them know which siren is not functioning properly. Please do not call 911, the Sheriff's Office, or Waseca County Emergency Management to report non-functional sirens.

The National Weather Service (NWS) does not activate the sirens in Waseca or any other county in Minnesota. The NWS just issues the warnings that are used by the local officials as an aid in making the decision to activate sirens. In Waseca County, the Sheriff's Office is responsible for activating sirens based upon warnings issued by the NWS or the locally generated warning issued by the Emergency Management personnel based upon reports received by trained severe weather spotters. Personnel in the Waseca County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) also have the capability to activate the sirens in each city, although it is normally coordinated with the Sheriff's Office dispatcher.

Once the sirens are activated for a community, they will normally sound for around three minutes or until the dispatcher issues a cancel command. During particularly dangerous weather events, the sirens may be activated once every few minutes until the threat passes by the community. There is no such thing as an "all-clear" siren, so a second or third activation means that the threat is still imminent and finding or staying in a safe shelter area is strongly encouraged.

Outdoor warning sirens are exactly that, they are meant to be heard outdoors only and under reasonable conditions. Sirens are not designed to be heard over loud music, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and other outdoor power equipment. When Waseca County activates the sirens in a community, it is being done to alert people outdoors of an impending severe weather event. It is recommended that if you hear the sirens you immediately stop what you are doing, go indoors, and tune into your NWS Weather Radio, favorite local radio station or TV station for further details and seek shelter immediately if conditions warrant it. An outdoor warning siren being sounded is not an invitation to go outside and look around to see what is happening. Just a reminder that Metro Area TV and radio stations may not report on severe weather events in Southern Minnesota.

To receive severe weather warnings indoors, Waseca County Emergency Management and the National Weather Service recommend the purchase of a weather radio, which can be found on-line or can be purchased from local stores that sell electronics such as Radio Shack or Wal-Mart. Many of the newer radios can be programmed for a specific county using the Specific Area Message Encoding protocol (SAME code) and can set to sound for a variety of weather events other than just severe weather. Waseca County's SAME code is 027161. To find other Minnesota county SAME codes, visit http://www.weather.gov/nwr/CntyCov/nwrMN.htm for the complete listing.