Today kicks off Severe Weather Awareness Week and the Raccoon Valley Radio news team will be bringing you a variety of information about storms in Iowa and how our Severe Weather Awareness Team works to help keep you safe when things get ugly.

Today we focus on severe thunderstorms and the threats they pose.

Dallas County Emergency Management Coordinator Barry Halling says

“A line of severe thunderstorms an produce winds will do as much, or sometimes maybe more damage, than a tornado actually will.  Sometimes you get a line of wind that could be anywhere from a mile to five miles wide, or even wider, and those can do significant damage to trees, power lines, sheds if the doors are open on the wrong side or roofs, those kinds of things.”

A severe thunderstorm is defined as a storm that contains hail that is one inch in diameter or larger, straight line winds 58 miles per hour or stronger and/or a tornado.

Anytime there is a severe thunderstorm or tornado warning in Dallas, Greene or Guthrie county the Raccoon Valley Radio network’s Severe Weather Action Team breaks into regular programming to provide you with live, wall-to-wall coverage of the storm until it exits the area or drops below severe levels.  We are in contact with meteorologists with the National Weather Service and WeatherEye, local authorities and storm spotters in the field to bring you all of the up to the minute information.