In my area, emergency siren testing is the first Saturday of every month at 1 PM—it continues in the winter because the sirens are the signal to get cars off the streets during winter storms.
Growing up in Oklahoma, we always did it at noon on a Saturday. My spouse went to college in Oklahoma and came from a place that didn’t have sirens. He didn’t know what they were for the longest time. He just thought that we felt strongly about air raid preparedness. He finally got it when I made a comment about it once.
We don’t get tornadoes where I live now, so no sirens.
I’m from the Midwest, where they did it monthly. It was either Tuesday or Wednesday, in the morning but can’t remember exactly what time.. it’s been a while since I’ve lived there. I’m in the southeast now and haven’t heard a single siren.
They only do it once or twice a year where I live now (which is weird because we get a lot of tornadoes). But where I’m from it was every Tuesday at 10am.
It’s definitely a Wednesday for the full siren test, I wanna say the third of the month but I work in a different town than where I live so I’m not 100% sure.
The town is also one of those that still does the noon and evening "whistle," which in our case uses the same siren as the tornado siren. So I guess it’s getting tested with a short blast twelve times a week every week (no whistles on Sunday)
In Oklahoma City it was noon every Saturday. In Colorado, never! I thought it was so weird there weren’t sirens when I had my first tornado warning here.
Where I work, we have a routine siren test every Wednesday at noon, but it’s not for tornadoes. It’s in case the massive dam upstream gives way. If the dam fails, we have 90 minutes to reach higher ground before we’re under 30 feet of water.
1 pm first Wednesday of the month in North Dakota and Minnesota. There is also severe weather week in October and April where the sirens are tested outside of the first Wednesday.
I’ve never heard of such a thing. At least not state-wide. (NC) I used to work at a place that had Tornado drills every quarter, but that was a company thing.
Hawaii is the first working day of the month, with announcements on media first, then sirens at 11:45 a.m. One of our big tsunamis was on April Fools Day, of course. I think 1956. Just about wiped out Hilo. A friend told a terrifying story about a siren going off accidentally when she was with her children and couldn’t escape. Glad my house is about 200′ above the ocean.
California and Colorado, where I have family, do not have emergency sirens.
Used to be every Wednesday at noon. They quit working a couple years ago and the city decided it wasn’t worth it to fix because of cell phone geographical notification of the emergency alert system now.
First Wednesday of the month at 11AM. At my old job, I managed a girl who had literally JUST moved from a state that didn’t have tornados, she was beyond terrified of the concept. Forgot to warn her about the test sirens, poor girl practically had a heart attack.
In Columbus, OH it was noon on Wednesday. I think every week if I remember right. I do remember one time we had an actual warning right near noon on Wednesday which I thought was funny.
Here where I am in Maine I don’t even know if we have sirens. I’ve never heard them tested if we do have them. I have seen old speakers on poles at police stations and googled it. Apparently we did have sirens historically but it was for the risk of nuclear attack and they haven’t been used in forever. I think other parts of the state do have them near the coast for severe coastal weather.
Tornados here are pretty rare and not powerful or long lasting. I think we get like one or two a year and have never had a recorded fatality from one.
Never. Living in western Washington there have been small funnel clouds but nothing that touched down or if it did was immediately gone. Although there was a 2% chance a few days ago of a tornado somewhere in the greater Puget Sound region. Did it ever happen?
My city doesn’t have tornado sirens, which makes sense cuz I think we’ve had one tornado here in the past hundred something years, and that was when I was a teenager.
I’m in the SF Bay Area, we have a siren every Wednesday at noon. I read that it was originally put up in the 90s to warn about fires. After 9/11 they test it regularly as a warning system for terrorist attacks.
I live in California and I haven’t heard one in decades. In Wisconsin when I was a kid they were EVERY Sunday. It interesting to see that the national weather service must have moved to a once a month thing or something?
Used to be noon on first Friday every month, then the morons switched to a opt in phone alert system and didn’t tell anyone. As far as I know this system never gets tested…
Oh… I’m the local cell tower tech and get all sorts of test only messages but never from this system.
Not a thing where I live. We have had pretty severe tornados touch down at random throughout the years, but the town has never made a plan to do anything about them because they are quite rare. We’ve only had maybe 3 or 4 in the last 20 years.
Fortunately never. Tornadoes are super rare in Boston. There have been some to the west of here every one in a while but even normal thunderstorms die when they get close to the coast, so I’ve never heard of one anywhere close to here ever.
Not specifically for tornadoes but in my hometown it was 1pm on Mondays. My school had a siren on top of the building so it was a loud interruption to class.
We don’t have them where I live. We do have the local fire department doing their test at I think noon every day. But I don’t think they go off for a tornado. I’m in my 40s and I’ve only been close enough to hear one, but I’ve never even seen one.
Plus, the state does a bonus test in March for severe weather awareness week. It’s a different day of the week and they announce it a couple weeks ahead of time.
This is set by towns and/or fire departments, not by state. My fire company was required to do one monthly because back in the late 1940s, we’d gotten our massive siren with help from a grant from the Civil Defense Fund. We actually did our test at noon on Saturdays every week, and also set it off at 7 pm on Wednesday nights because that was our regular meeting/drill night. We also used to set it off for every call, then when pagers & plectrons became a thing, only for day calls, then started phasing it out for day calls.
My home county tests its outdoor warning system (primarily for lahars, but also tsunamis and tornados) the first Monday of every month. The lowlands in the South Prarie Creek, carbon river valleys do an annual evacuation drill to the plateaus once a year.
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not a thing where I live
My college town in central pa had an emergency alert siren at 10 or 11 on Saturdays which was a good alarm if you slept in and didn’t mean to
In my area, emergency siren testing is the first Saturday of every month at 1 PM—it continues in the winter because the sirens are the signal to get cars off the streets during winter storms.
Noon on the first Wednesday of the month, if I recall correctly
It’s up to each municipality.
Where I live, it’s usually the first Saturday of each month at 1:00.
First Saturday of the month at noon. Â
Every Wednesday and Saturday at noon
1st Saturday before noon
I don’t think we have one.
Noon SaturdayÂ
It used to be the first Tuesday of the month but they switched to Wednesday a couple years ago.
Just about gave everyone in town a heart attack too because they DID NOT publicize the change like they should have.
Every Friday in Spring and Summer at the 11:00am.
Wednesday 10am
Noon every single Saturday.. but to be fair we get a great deal more tornadoes than average in Oklahoma
First Monday at noon
My town runs the sirens everyday at noon.
Routine? Never I don’t think… we do have a siren but I’ve only ever heard it go off in like actual emergencies
Don’t have one. But the siren test for chemical releases is every Monday at noon.
First Tuesday of the month, 10am.
Noon on the first Saturday county wide.
Noon on Wednesday
Ours are done the first Wednesday of the month at noon.
1st Wednesday of the month at noon.
Ours go off everyday at 6am-12p-1p-6pm. It’s stupid
Growing up in Oklahoma, we always did it at noon on a Saturday. My spouse went to college in Oklahoma and came from a place that didn’t have sirens. He didn’t know what they were for the longest time. He just thought that we felt strongly about air raid preparedness. He finally got it when I made a comment about it once.
We don’t get tornadoes where I live now, so no sirens.
First Tuesday of the month, 10:00 a.m.
Wednesday at noon every week
Every Wednesday at noon.
First Wednesday of the month at 1pm
Wednesdays at noon
The first Saturday of the month at 1 pm.
First Tuesday I believe.
I normally get a SMS alert day of.
10 a.m., first Tuesday of the month
I grew up in Chicagoland. First Tuesday at 10 am. When I moved to the mountains it felt weird to NOT hear the tornado siren on that day.
There have been 133 recorded tornados in the history of the state I live in, since 1951. 5 total in city limits, since 1904. No siren.
1st Tuesday, 10 AM
noon first Wednesday (ohio)
1 pm, first Saturday of the month.
I’m from the Midwest, where they did it monthly. It was either Tuesday or Wednesday, in the morning but can’t remember exactly what time.. it’s been a while since I’ve lived there. I’m in the southeast now and haven’t heard a single siren.
Every Monday at noon except in bad weather (ks)
Florida; we don’t have them.
(I think Oviedo, north of Orlando, does, but that’s the only one I’ve heard of.)
Every Saturday at noon. Freaks out people who aren’t from around here. 🙂
The Nuclear power plants do a routine siren test once a quarter on Wednesday. No tornado sirens.
10AM first Tuesday of the month.
First friday of the month at 11AM. I think it used to be weekly if I remember correctly.
We don’t have one here. Where I grew up, it was noon on Saturday.
Also please get something more reliable like a weather radio and don’t rely on sirens for tornado warnings.
We don’t have tornado sirens, but we do have sirens to alert us if there’s a nuclear meltdown at a semi-nearby nuclear plant
10:15am on the first Wednesday of each month.
Tuesday at 10am.
They don’t, because we really don’t get tornadoes. However, at the seacoast they have "nuclear reactor meltdown" sires that they test.
Tornado siren test????? And we live in Tornado Alley, but rural. The county seat does it on the first Wednesday of the month.
They only do it once or twice a year where I live now (which is weird because we get a lot of tornadoes). But where I’m from it was every Tuesday at 10am.
Never. There are never tornadoes here.
We don’t have tornado sirens where I live, but we do have lahar sirens and those are tested first Monday of the month at noon.
1pm on the first Saturday of the month
When I lived in a town with an emergency siren, it was one Saturday a month, around noon I think.
Never, Pacific Northwest.
Every Friday at noon.
Every Wednesday at noon.
Dallas, Wednesday at noon. Don’t know what fucking Wednesday tho
Every single Monday at noon except for holidays and on Mondays where the sky already appears "threatening."
First Tuesday of the month 10 am
10 am on the last Wednesday of the month
It’s definitely a Wednesday for the full siren test, I wanna say the third of the month but I work in a different town than where I live so I’m not 100% sure.
The town is also one of those that still does the noon and evening "whistle," which in our case uses the same siren as the tornado siren. So I guess it’s getting tested with a short blast twelve times a week every week (no whistles on Sunday)
I didn’t even know that tornado sirens get tested at predictable times. I’ve never lived in an area that had one or needed one.
Noon every Wednesday
On the first Monday of the month, in the morning and evening.
The Illinois standard is the first Tuesday of the month at 10am, but I’ve heard some towns put it off to the second Tuesday.
First Wednesday of the month at 11 a.m.
Every Wednesday at 3:30 and Saturday at noon
First Wed of the month at 1pm
Noon every Monday unless there is bad weather.
In Oklahoma City it was noon every Saturday. In Colorado, never! I thought it was so weird there weren’t sirens when I had my first tornado warning here.
Every Friday at I think 11am
Michigan. First Saturday of each month at 1pm.
Every Saturday at noon
Every Wednesday at 11am for the one in my town. A few towns over, it’s every Thursday at noon.
Every Wednesday at noon. Wee woo o’cock
Every Wednesday at noon. I’m in an area where I can hear two different sirens as well so it’s pretty loud
Where I work, we have a routine siren test every Wednesday at noon, but it’s not for tornadoes. It’s in case the massive dam upstream gives way. If the dam fails, we have 90 minutes to reach higher ground before we’re under 30 feet of water.
Fuck if I know tbh, I’m out of earshot of the local sirens and we use them more for flooding than we do for tornadoes anyway
Arkansas; Every Wednesday at noon, unless there is bad weather going on at that time.
First Saturday of the month at 1 PM, but sometimes they do an extra one during school hours so the kids can run drills.
Tulsa, OK every Wednesday at noon even when cloudy…
I always thought it’d be a great Silent Hill-esque effect for videos.
We don’t, because I live in Massachusetts 🫣 I might freeze to death but I’m pretty safe from tornados
10 am..1st Tuesday of each month
Missouri first Monday of the month, unless there is inclement weather possible (local areas won’t have it).
Edit: St. Louis
Fridays at noon
Dont have one.
1 pm first Wednesday of the month in North Dakota and Minnesota. There is also severe weather week in October and April where the sirens are tested outside of the first Wednesday.
Never, they are not a regular enough occurrence around here
Wednesday at noon in NE Oklahoma, Saturday at noon in Central Oklahoma
10am first Tuesday of month
What do you do for hurricane preparation?
First Wednesday of the month for our tornado and high winds siren, unless weather is bad. They will skip it to avoid confusion if that’s the case.
First Friday of every month at 10 AM.
Edit: Like Matchboxx, they only do it if the weather is good. If it looks like a good storm blowing up, they won’t so they don’t alarm the locals.
We don’t have those at all.
First Saturday of the month. At noon.
First Wednesday of month 12:00-12:01
I’m in the Memphis suburbs. Sirens are tested at 3:30pm every Wednesday. The town I used to live in, about 25 minutes south, was 9am on Saturdays.
I’ve never heard of such a thing. At least not state-wide. (NC) I used to work at a place that had Tornado drills every quarter, but that was a company thing.
Saturday at 1pm, every week.
No sirens here in the middle of North Carolina, although we do get tornadoes.
I always take my shirt off and go outside to shout at the tornado. I am not taking chances this is just a test, always be prepared.
Noon on Wednesday.
A what?
No tornado siren, but the nuclear power plant alarm test is the first Monday in June and December.
Yep the first Wednesday of the month at 1pm and 7pm.
First Tuesday of the month.
No tornadoes in Phoenix, thank God.
There are no tornado sirens. We get a message accompanied by sound on our phone.
A silent test every Wednesday at noon, with a full test every Saturday at noon, provided the weather is good.
Saturday at noon where I’m at in Wisconsin.
Hawaii is the first working day of the month, with announcements on media first, then sirens at 11:45 a.m. One of our big tsunamis was on April Fools Day, of course. I think 1956. Just about wiped out Hilo. A friend told a terrifying story about a siren going off accidentally when she was with her children and couldn’t escape. Glad my house is about 200′ above the ocean.
California and Colorado, where I have family, do not have emergency sirens.
10am first Tues of month
Used to be every Wednesday at noon. They quit working a couple years ago and the city decided it wasn’t worth it to fix because of cell phone geographical notification of the emergency alert system now.
First Saturday of the month!!
First Tuesday of the month at 10 AM
11am on Friday
I wanna say it’s the first Friday of the month at noon
Every Wednesday at noon unless there is a threat for tornadoes on Wednesday then they won’t do it
Never.
No tornados here in California, and I like it like that.
Saturdays. I think it’s around 1pm.
Every sat at noon. I had no idea what it was when we moved here lol
First Wednesday of the month at 11AM. At my old job, I managed a girl who had literally JUST moved from a state that didn’t have tornados, she was beyond terrified of the concept. Forgot to warn her about the test sirens, poor girl practically had a heart attack.
In Columbus, OH it was noon on Wednesday. I think every week if I remember right. I do remember one time we had an actual warning right near noon on Wednesday which I thought was funny.
Here where I am in Maine I don’t even know if we have sirens. I’ve never heard them tested if we do have them. I have seen old speakers on poles at police stations and googled it. Apparently we did have sirens historically but it was for the risk of nuclear attack and they haven’t been used in forever. I think other parts of the state do have them near the coast for severe coastal weather.
Tornados here are pretty rare and not powerful or long lasting. I think we get like one or two a year and have never had a recorded fatality from one.
Never. Living in western Washington there have been small funnel clouds but nothing that touched down or if it did was immediately gone. Although there was a 2% chance a few days ago of a tornado somewhere in the greater Puget Sound region. Did it ever happen?
I did tornado drills in school, but I don’t think that SC has a monthly drill. And this doesn’t surprise me at all.
My city doesn’t have tornado sirens, which makes sense cuz I think we’ve had one tornado here in the past hundred something years, and that was when I was a teenager.
First Tuesday of the month. I never remember the time but its around 10ish?
Noon on Saturday
I’m in the SF Bay Area, we have a siren every Wednesday at noon. I read that it was originally put up in the 90s to warn about fires. After 9/11 they test it regularly as a warning system for terrorist attacks.
I live in California and I haven’t heard one in decades. In Wisconsin when I was a kid they were EVERY Sunday. It interesting to see that the national weather service must have moved to a once a month thing or something?
Used to be noon on first Friday every month, then the morons switched to a opt in phone alert system and didn’t tell anyone. As far as I know this system never gets tested…
Oh… I’m the local cell tower tech and get all sorts of test only messages but never from this system.
Never. We don’t have them in California
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday depending on the district and if the parish fire district is busy.
Time is between 0900-1115
First Tuesday of the month at 10 AM.
1st Saturday of month. 1pm
Never that I know of.
First Tuesday at 2 each month but it’s a nuclear meltdown siren instead of tornado siren since we’re near a plant
First workday of the month at 11:45, but it is for tsunamis, and hurricanes, not tornadoes.
Not a thing where I live. We have had pretty severe tornados touch down at random throughout the years, but the town has never made a plan to do anything about them because they are quite rare. We’ve only had maybe 3 or 4 in the last 20 years.
Never..we dont have tornados. We have earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and wildfire, but no tornados.
Never.
In the 5 years or so I’ve lived in the PNW I could probably count the number of thunderstorms we’ve had on one hand.
Tornado Siren test? Not a thing in CA.
But schools do have earthquake drills. Apparently out here every single problem or natural disaster can be solved by getting under your desk.
First Wednesday of the month at 1PM
Baltimore doesn’t have one but when I went to college in Iowa it was Thursdays at 9AM. Woke me up sometimes.
Some do every day at noon. Others are Mondays at 7pm. But it’s for fires, not tornadoes
Fortunately never. Tornadoes are super rare in Boston. There have been some to the west of here every one in a while but even normal thunderstorms die when they get close to the coast, so I’ve never heard of one anywhere close to here ever.
I have never heard one in my life
We have a nuc plant nearby so we get their tests. Always freaks me out but as long as it’s on a Wednesday its good.
Not specifically for tornadoes but in my hometown it was 1pm on Mondays. My school had a siren on top of the building so it was a loud interruption to class.
We don’t have them where I live. We do have the local fire department doing their test at I think noon every day. But I don’t think they go off for a tornado. I’m in my 40s and I’ve only been close enough to hear one, but I’ve never even seen one.
Every Tuesday at 10:00am
Noon on the first and third Fridays of the month.
First Monday of the month at 11:00 AM.
Plus, the state does a bonus test in March for severe weather awareness week. It’s a different day of the week and they announce it a couple weeks ahead of time.
Noon on the first Friday of the month except it’s a tsunami siren because we’re right on the coast
1st Saturday of the month at 1pm in Michigan.
Funny thing is – it was the same where I was born in Sao Paulo, Brasil.
11am every Friday from mid-March or so through October
This is set by towns and/or fire departments, not by state. My fire company was required to do one monthly because back in the late 1940s, we’d gotten our massive siren with help from a grant from the Civil Defense Fund. We actually did our test at noon on Saturdays every week, and also set it off at 7 pm on Wednesday nights because that was our regular meeting/drill night. We also used to set it off for every call, then when pagers & plectrons became a thing, only for day calls, then started phasing it out for day calls.
I heard a tsunami warning test once. I did not live there, but I think monthly ( which makes sense to me).
My home county tests its outdoor warning system (primarily for lahars, but also tsunamis and tornados) the first Monday of every month. The lowlands in the South Prarie Creek, carbon river valleys do an annual evacuation drill to the plateaus once a year.
annual lahar drill
Tsunami’s, and the 1st of tha month
We have tsunami test siren warnings on the west coast once a week.