KDSN RADIO News
Statewide Tornado Drill Tomorrow Morning
Announcement from National Weather Service and Des Moines Weather Forecast Office:
Severe Weather Awareness Week is underway, and the Tornado Drill day is quicklyapproaching. The Tornado Drill will be on Wednesday, March 27, starting promptly at 10:00 AM CDT.
Your participation is key to enhancing community preparedness.
We encourage schools, hospitals, law enforcement, and other agencies to join us in testingsevere weather emergency communications and sheltering plans during this drill. Together, let'sensure our readiness.
A couple of notes for the drill:
- Drill begins at 10am CDT, Wednesday, March 27th
- NWS will send a scripted message to NOAA Weather Radio at that time, which will
alarm and show as the Routine Weekly Test on receivers. This is in lieu of the normal
11am weekly test.
- There will be no “hard copy” of a warning. Nothing will come across NLETS. Standard
media outlets won’t broadcast anything (like a crawl on TV, etc). And nothing will be
posted on our website. We may do a social media post as part of the drill period.
- NWS offices will announce a short NAWAS or ISICS message, and likely a brief
statement in NWSChat (Slack).
- There will be no “test” watch.
- There will be no “ending” statement. It just ends/times out after 5 to 15 minutes.
- We encourage community participation in readiness for the upcoming severe weather
season.
- As part of this week’s *special* test tornado drill, dispatchers are encouraged to fan-out
this message to test emergency communication capabilities and local spotting activation
procedures.
- All schools, businesses, hospitals, law enforcement, and other agencies are urged to
test severe weather emergency communications, and sheltering plans.