Statewide Tornado Drill today at 10 a.m.

[March 03, 2015]  LINCOLN - The National Weather Service for all Illinois NWS offices will be conducting the annual Statewide Tornado Drill this morning, Tuesday March 3, 2015 at 10 a.m. CST.

An actual Tornado Warning will be issued with TEST wording throughout the message for every county in the state of Illinois. The wording will specifically mention that this test is being done as part of Severe Weather Preparedness Week in Illinois and that there is no severe weather occurring anywhere in the state.
 

This TEST warning will:

• Activate all weather alert radios
   
• Activate the Emergency Alert System (EAS) at most TV, cable TV outlets and radio stations
  • Many broadcasters have told us that they will intercept the message and stop it from interrupting their programming. They may do their own message/crawl to inform people
     
• Activate warning reception systems at PSAPs / the Illinois LEADS system
   
• Be forwarded by some smart phone apps
  • This test warning will NOT be forwarded by the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system that was established by FEMA and the FCC a couple of years ago.

[Chris Miller, Warning Coordination Meteorologist, National Weather Service]