Watch: strange tornado sirens in downtown Chicago

Exactly. Chicago does the air raid siren on the first Tuesday of every month at 10:00am central time. This siren is different, because a tornado whipping through a major city is a very different type of danger.

Going to your basement in a house is a reasonable precaution; everyone in a skyscraper going to the basement of a building that might have significant damage blocking egress is quite another. The opportunity for many multiples of people being killed, injured, and made homeless due to a tornado in the middle of a multi-million population has been theory until recently, but we have seen that they are encroaching and even touching down within city limits now. Hence, the added security of a siren no one can ignore.

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Pretty sure that’s the siren warning of imminent space dolphin attack.

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Our town in Maine used to sound the siren at the volunteer fire department every night at 9pm(?) signaling curfew for the kids. Now that I think back on it I only remember them doing that in the summer months. I’ll have to ask my siblings and friends what they remember.

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I remember that well! The building where I worked at that time lost some windows during that storm, though I never heard the sirens down in the South Loop.

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Okay…but there’s still air for Pan-Galactic Dolphin to breathe in the inverted spaceship, right?

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Dolphins - In Spaaaaace!

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They were purchased it a little-publicised trade deal with Scarfolk council.

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Has a tornado ever passed through on a Monday at noon? That’d cause some confusion.

A pulp mill I worked at tested their site evacuation alarm every Wednesday at 11:30. One fine Wednesday at 11:25, they had a chlorine dioxide gas leak. Surprisingly, only a couple people needed to go to hospital overnight.

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When I was a kid, 50+ years ago, I watched The Diary of Anne Frank and heard European sirens for the first time. To this day, those things freak me.

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Not really, if the sky wasn’t dark and green at the time.

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Here in Detroit the air raid sirens are tested on the first Saturday of every month. Pretty sure the tornado sirens are the same ones.

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The city in Kansas where I’m from only does the tests if it’s a clear day.

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Huh. Thursday. This is why I hate Thursdays.

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