Am I the only one with a slight federal siren interest? I think my favorite type is an Allertor 125, those are what we have all around San Angelo, we have three (that I know of) Thunderbolts 1000T's , a few SD-10's, a T128, a P 15, and a P-50/T-135. I'm thinking of recording some of the sirens going off, I live near an Alletor at an old elementary school, I'll prolly do that in the summer, cause of school. If yall have any siren anything feel free to post it, well obviously cause I can't really say what you can put on here, haha.
BigMatt
Added the "n" in interest and got rid of formatting. -un1
The old Chrysler sirens with the hemi V8 engines were pretty cool.
Honestly i find them scary and a warning of the danger coming. Although Nuclear Test sirens are worse. :-(
Quote from: Nexis4Jersey on March 11, 2010, 01:54:57 AM
Honestly i find them scary and a warning of the danger coming. Although Nuclear Test sirens are worse. :-(
In this part of the country, a tornado siren is a signal for everybody to go outside and look at the sky.
Quote from: bugo on March 11, 2010, 02:07:22 AM
Quote from: Nexis4Jersey on March 11, 2010, 01:54:57 AM
Honestly i find them scary and a warning of the danger coming. Although Nuclear Test sirens are worse. :-(
In this part of the country, a tornado siren is a signal for everybody to go outside and look at the sky.
Same here. We test ours every first Tuesday of the month at 10:00 am. Heaven forbid there be a tornado warning at that exact time.
Oklahoma City & surrounding suburbs test their tornado sirens each Saturday at noon, but they do not sound them if there are storms in the area.
Here in Norman it's on Fridays at noon, though I'm never outside at that time. Though if a tornado were to strike here, chances are I would be at work, in the basement of the building, and if I noticed at all I'd probably be more worried about the power going out and turning off our vacuum systems than about death and destruction...
We don't have tornadoes, but we do have sirens in the Netherlands, which are the same as air raid sirens and are usually used to alert people when hazardous materials are in the air or something, hence they are hardly used, but they are tested every 1st Monday of the month at noon.
I can't recall having them heard any other time than their monthly test runs...
We don't have sirens here, even though there is a threat of them (although the last one was in 2006), I have never heard one go off here.
Also just to add, all the post about Big Matts word use have been deleted as well as the off-topic ones that followed. Further discussion of it is not permitted in this thread.
We had a tornado just in 2008 that blew the roof off a factory here, me and my sister heard the sirens and just looked at each other, then went to a hallway in my house...
BigMatt
Quote from: Nexis4Jersey on March 11, 2010, 01:54:57 AM
Honestly i find them scary and a warning of the danger coming. Although Nuclear Test sirens are worse. :-(
I have never heard either. Have sat through several tornado warnings in various places, as well as various situations that were never called as tornadoes but almost became such a thing (note to self: when seeing
rotating clouds directly overhead - forget endless fascination and just run like Hell) - but, I've never heard the sirens.
I have heard many tornado sirens in my years of storm chasing. The first time I heard one, I thought it was a fire whistle since that is what it means around here.
The freakiest time I heard one was one night around 9 PM CDT north of Knob Noster, Missouri, sitting on the side of a country road and it was absolutely quiet except for the siren.
They had them growing up in Indiana and would go off several times a year, whenever a tornado warning was issued for the county. If we were near a TV, we'd turn it on to see exactly where the supposed tornado was. Since they would go off county-wide, 99% of the time we weren't in the path of the "tornado". Also, since the NWS issues tornado warnings based on doppler radar returns, there was almost never actually a tornado. If there wasn't a TV around, we'd go outside and look, then usually just ignore them.
They're only just starting to install them in various communities here in Florida. I know Oviedo and UCF both installed some a year or so ago, but most places just tell you to buy a wx radio.
I am also a fan of these. First siren I heard was a Federal Signal 2T22 in Madison, MS where I was living at the time. It was a across from my school as a matter of fact. I have a lot of family in Memphis and they have a great system of new and old sirens and they test every week, so it's a great place for a siren lover. Sadly, Houston has no active sirens. Though, there are still old Federal Signal 1000Ts from the Cold War-era that are found predominately within the I-610 loop, but I have been told that they have been inactive since about 1990. I go to the University of Houston and the campus has a few Whelen WPS 2803s. One is place on the top level of the parking garage that you could walk up and touch if you really wanted to. I don't believe I've ever heard them in person though.
Here's a link to some interesting information about the Chrysler Hemi V8 air raid sirens. Be sure to listen to the sound clips. Those Hemis sounded wicked.
http://www.victorysiren.com/x/index.htm