Aurora Tornado Sirens Confusing After No Warning Issued
AURORA, Colo. (CBS4) - The City of Aurora sounded its tornado sirens on Sunday afternoon even though no official warning was issued.
In Aurora city limits, 56 sirens sounded for three minutes and alerted those living in the area to a severe weather threat. The National Weather Service in Boulder said that threat never existed.
"This doesn't occur very often, usually our warnings go off the National Weather Service tornado warnings," said Aurora Office of Emergency Management spokesman Matt Chapman.
According to the National Weather Service, there were no tornado watches or warnings issued in Aurora on Sunday.
Chapman said the siren came from first responders and their reports of rotating clouds. Crews did not confer with the National Weather Service.
"We have always taken the approach that we trust our first responders' judgement," said Chapman.
Chapman said the first responders in Aurora are trained once a year by experts from the National Weather Service on how to spot dangerous weather conditions. Those warnings go up the chain of command as quickly as possible.
According to the National Weather Service, it's up to each city to decide when and when not to sound alarms.
"There's always a degree of time that we are trying to be sensitive of when we get these reports," said Chapman.
Families reacted in a variety of ways, from those criticizing the decision to sound the sirens to those who said they would rather be safe than sorry.
"We would rather err on the side of caution, get the siren out, get the warning out as quickly as we can," said Chapman.
This is the first year that the city decided not to sound an all-clear siren after a warning one.