Two storm videos with sirens

[ver tum]

Whelen, 2001, and possibly a Thunderbolt 1000 from TN:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=R4Tz-NCMrDI

Older video from Bridgeview & Burbank, IL, featuring a Thunderbeam with a broken rotator? and dual tone Thunderbolts:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YIAatv3GM9w

[StonedChipmunk]

Always love videos like the first one... dimwits under a giant black cloud while sirens are blaring just saying "dude, lol, that's a siren hahahah oh wow awesome a funnel cloud" because you just KNOW they're going to be screwed.

Oh, and second video is awesome... gotta love (relatively safe) action shots! Also... those sirens were activated at totally different times. Is this due to a manual activation or was there just a bad system? Sounds like possibly a 2001 at first, then some Thunderbolts came in.

[ver tum]

The system in the second video sounded like it could have been one of the systems that is activated in zones, and not the whole entire county at once. The distant siren could have even been in a different county. Did you notice how at least one of the Thunderbolts was sounding in Attack instead of Alert? We used to have a couple here in Louisville that did the same thing. Any idea of what could cause that to happen?

[StonedChipmunk]

The system in the second video sounded like it could have been one of the systems that is activated in zones, and not the whole entire county at once. The distant siren could have even been in a different county. Did you notice how at least one of the Thunderbolts was sounding in Attack instead of Alert? We used to have a couple here in Louisville that did the same thing. Any idea of what could cause that to happen?

I'm going to say either different counties or privately owned and operated sirens. Many counties have their own system, which signals others to activate their own private sirens. Still, I haven't heard of any older mechanicals running privately... mostly newer sirens, for campuses.

Another possibility could be that they are manually activated one at a time. This would be very inefficient, and it might go so far as they had to go to each siren to activate it manually on-site. This could be due to different encodings - older sirens could be using an older outdated signal and newer ones (or newly installed ones) could be using new encodings (or, if the system is mostly used sirens, they could just be transmitting the signal for each siren individually because they all use different signals).

Either way, awesome videos. I'll be sure to save them.

[ver tum]

Missouri State University does have older electro-mechanical sirens, including two SD-10's, and an STH-10, that they activate themselves. Those sirens are completely independent of the city of Springfield. More about those sirens can be found in this thread. I never thought about that one siren belonging to a university, but it's very possible.

Lawrince, Kansas has one of the systems that is activated in zones. A video featuring that system can be found in this thread.

I also noticed that in the first video in this thread, the Whelen was activated before the other sirens were. The Whelen could have been a privately owned siren, or it may have had to have been activated independently, because there is sometimes a conflict with Whelens in Federal systems.

[StonedChipmunk]

I also noticed that in the first video in this thread, the Whelen was activated before the other sirens were. The Whelen could have been a privately owned siren, or it may have had to have been activated independently, because there is sometimes a conflict with Whelens in Federal systems.

That's what I was trying to get at - if it's a bunch of different sirens then there will most likely be encoding conflicts and they have to be activated separately.

Zoned counties are rare, but I've seen them before. Especially helpful for large counties with only a specific area they need to warn (a single city, for example).

[jkvernon]

I believe that most, if not all, of Chicago's suburbs run and maintain their own systems. Also, a few cities around Chicago, including Chicago itself, run attack instead of alert. The "Thunderbeam with a broken rotator" is most likely a Model 5 or STH10.

[2T22Fan4ever]

I saw the second video a few days ago.

That funnel cloud is something!