EDITORIAL: Tornado sirens, history remind us to be weather aware

Madison County Emergency Management Director Jason Moore wants everyone to know there will be a statewide tornado drill next week.

On Wednesday, Feb. 22, at 9:30 a.m., tornado sirens are set to go off.

Hopefully the weather will be sunny with blue skies, which will make everyone wonder why tornado sirens are going off.

So if you’re sitting at your desk or wherever you work or exist on a Wednesday morning, keep that in mind when it sounds like you need to be looking for a basement or ditch or something to jump into.

But this isn’t something to be ignored.

Madison County is one of those counties who should have an idea of how important a plan for staying safe during a tornado is.

Last year, we had a pair of tornadoes (or possibly the same one), do extensive damage on the western edge of the county around Denmark and also on the northeastern edge just south of Medina.

When tornadoes blasted Samburg and Downtown Dresden in December of 2021, southeast Madison County got hit with smaller tornadoes that night as well.

And that’s just in the last two years.

The calendar recently went past the 15^th anniversary of the tornado that hit Union’s campus and kept students pinned under rubble for hours.

Before that, there were massive storms in 1999 and 2003 that did heavy damage in Bemis and Downtown Jackson.

For the most part, rural West Tennessee is flat, and that gives wind patterns in low barometric pressure areas a chance to circulate and spin tornadoes off storms as they roll through the region.

Jackson has dealt with its share of this.

So Wednesday morning at 9:30 a.m., when we hear the sirens, let’s not look up, wonder what is going on and then remember reading this editorial and then go back about our morning with no other thought to the sound.

Let’s be mindful of our plans if severe weather is in the area and what to do if we’re on the path of a tornado, because that plan could be the difference between life and death.

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