This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 26, 2011 - After a long day, Jan Mayer was looking forward to a nice dinner. But after preparing the tasty shrimp and salmon dish, the 28-year-old did something unusual. She put her meal on a plate, set it down on the main level and walked down to join her boyfriend in the basement.
"I did not get a single bite of it," she said.
Minutes later, the worst tornado to hit St. Louis in more than four decades ripped through her quiet Maryland Heights neighborhood in the opening leg of a 22-mile path of destruction that would take it from Creve Coeur Lake to Granite City, flipping cars, damaging businesses and flattening homes along the way.
Like most north countians, Mayer heard the tornado sirens long before the twister's arrival though she remained upstairs cooking the meal she'd never get to eat while keeping a cautious eye on a nearby window and weather updates on the news. She even phoned her neighbor, who didn't have a basement, to invite her over for shelter should it become necessary. What caused her to set aside her food and head to the basement when she did seems inexplicable even to her.
"I don't actually remember why I went and stayed downstairs at that point," she said. "Undoubtedly, I saw something that told me to go downstairs but what that was I don't know."
'Something is Coming'
Determining "what that was" is the sort of mystery emergency planners and meteorologists alike find intriguing. What's the most effective way to inform the public of a tornado? More importantly, what will cause people to seek shelter when needed without creating unnecessary stress over false alarms?
Warning times are less of an issue today than they once were. In 1967, the last time an F4 tornado ravaged north county, three people were killed. This time none died; residents in even the worst-hit areas sought shelter before the storm arrived. That's largely due to Doppler radar, a two-decade-old innovation, which has vastly improved the ability of forecasters to see what's brewing in the violent heart of a supercell.
What's the Difference?
A tornado watch is when general conditions may lead to a tornado forming.
A tornado warning is when a tornado has been spotted in the area or indicated by radar, according to answers.com.
"The warnings are often coming out [early enough] to give people lots of time to figure out what's going on," said Jim Kramper, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service's St. Louis office. "It's not like you have only one or two minutes to decide. In this last event most people had at least 30 minutes lead time that something is coming."
And knowing something is coming is exactly what tornado sirens are for. A siren isn't designed to push people into a basement so much as to encourage them to get more information from media sources.
"For the most part, people are learning that if they hear it or see on TV that a warning is issued that they need to quickly assess their situation and find out if a storm is heading their way," said Kramper. "A lot of people are responding correctly and that's what we've been aiming for all these years."
Ironically, Mayer's decision of when and whether to seek cover was one Kramper and his NWS co-workers faced earlier the very same evening when their radar indicated atmospheric rotation approaching the forecast office in Weldon Spring. It passed to the north -- barely.
"We were prepared to go into the shelter in our building if we had to," Kramper said. "It had crossed our mind, and we knew it was a possibility."
All or Nothing?
The National Weather Service issues tornado warnings, but it falls to local officials to crank up the sirens. According to Brett Lord-Castillo, a GIS programmer at the St. Louis County Office of Emergency Management, the county has about 210 sirens covering roughly 80 percent of the county, each of them able to be heard about a mile in every direction. Present policy is to sound the alarm if a tornado is either in the county or in an adjacent area that puts it on a course for St. Louis County.
"It is an outdoor warning system, so it really does help for the people who are the most important, those outdoors and away from information sources," he said. "It makes them aware that something is happening, and they need to find out what is going on."
Lord-Castillo said most of the system, much of which dates at least to the early 1980s, is still functional though aging equipment, a lack of replacement parts and a dearth of coverage in the Wildwood area have been ongoing challenges. Emergency management officials hope such problems will be a thing of the past as the county brings new sirens online late this summer. The incoming system, the result of a tax passed by voters in 2009, is made up of 185 sirens with an improved audible radius of about 700 extra feet allowing for roughly 99 percent coverage countywide. The old sirens will eventually be phased out.
The new system will also offer a wider range of options. Under the present arrangement, all sirens must sound during an alert regardless of what part of the county is threatened. Its resplacement will feature more flexibility allowing sirens to blow in given regions. That would be a relief to those who often complain about "siren fatigue," hearing warnings too often for areas that aren't nearby.
Still, Lord-Castillo said no final decision has been made on whether to drop the all-or-nothing methodology. In fact, he warns that doing so could actually increase the number of alerts heard since sirens in one area would likely be overheard in another as they sound in sequential order keeping pace with a twister's progress.
People have generally responded well to the warnings, said Lord-Castillo pointing to the lack of fatalities in the most recent storm. He said that the single death recorded in the recent Sunset Hills tornado, which struck on New Year's Eve, was someone in a vehicle -- historically among the most dangerous spots since it provides no shelter.
"Even if they get a little tired of them, I think that when people hear the sirens, they know that means there is information they need to get and then they make those decisions from there," he said.
'There's a Tornado Headed Right for You'
Jason Granger admits he's a bit jaded to warnings though he has always taken them seriously. After last week, he certainly has good reason to.
"We lost basically every tree in the backyard," said the St. Ann resident who called Friday's tornado "just about the scariest thing of my life."
"It went right over the house," he said.
But in the end, it wasn't sirens or even television weather reports that drove the 31-year-old and his family to an interior room of his basementless home. It was a text from his brother. Granger said he hadn't heard any mention of a twister headed in his direction while watching the storm's progress on television. He was initially skeptical.
"He finally called me and said, 'I'm not joking around. I'm dead serious,'" he recalled. "'There's a tornado headed right for you. I said, 'OK, everyone into the office, we're hunkering down until this thing passes.'"
Granger, whose residence, like Mayer's, survived the storm, thinks officials should re-examine the adjacent county policy since tornadoes may dissipate before reaching the border. He also thinks more segmented warnings within St. Louis County are a good idea.
"False alarms are false alarms," he said. "People hear it and think 'Oh, great there's something in Jefferson County or Franklin County.'"
Getting the Call
Interestingly, Granger's warning by text isn't as unusual as one might assume. In fact, St. Louis County presently offers a service to do just that through nixle.com, a provider for communities around the nation. Lord-Castillo said about 1,700 St. Louis countians were signed up at last check for alerts, which come via both short-form texts and longer-form emails. It even ties into the county's Twitter feed.
Lord-Castillo said the county may soon be forced to look at other options as nixle.com, whose website also displays an option that includes voice messages, goes to a model requiring participating agencies to pay for some services.
"That's why there hasn't been a lot of advertising on it," he said. "We don't want to push people into a service that we may have to drop."
Another such service, CodeRED is used in the area as well. Users receive an email and a recorded phone message during alerts. It was an idea that the small town of Herculaneum, about 30 miles south of St. Louis, found appealing.
"We are designated just for Herculaneum so if we are not in the path of the storm, we don't get the warning," said Chris Pigg, the town's chief of police. "That's the unique thing about CodeRED."
Pigg is also a member of Jefferson County's emergency planning committee. At present, the county has no siren system in place, and Pigg said putting one in would have been cost prohibitive given the area's hilly terrain, which makes carrying sound to both hilltops and valleys difficult. Instead, local officials began using CodeRED countywide in 2009.
Most of the county's municipalities, including Herculaneum, do have siren warning systems, he said.
Still, Pigg notes that CodeRED has been a great benefit for his town, which shares a service plan with nearby Pevely and Festus. He said the benefits even extend beyond storm warnings allowing officials to inform citizens of more mundane announcements such as boil orders or cancelled events.
Its abilities could also be of use in other types of emergencies, he said.
"If a truck overturns on the highway containing hazardous materials, I can draw a circle around there according to what the hazard is, get a distance and notify everyone within that circle," Pigg said.
He said about 1,100 residents have signed up in Herculaneum for the service.
He believes that whatever the form of alert given, people will respond based on experience.
"It's the same everywhere," he said. "If you send out a warning and it doesn't happen, then people relax their guard. If you send out a warning and see what we've seen over the last weekend, people are very serious about it."
Individuals do seem to take it seriously, though everyone seems to have their own threshold for seeking shelter. Back in storm-ravaged Maryland Heights, Mayer recalled that one person in the neighborhood said he chose to go to the basement because his wife reported that her ears were popping.
No matter the reason, Mayer said the fact that no one was killed showed that they took the right course of action.
"Whatever people did this time, they listened to something, the sirens, the news, their ears popping -- something," she said.
David Baugher is a freelance writer in St. Louis.