Next week is National Severe Weather Awareness Week, and one of the key aspects of it each year is the Statewide Tornado Drill.

The drill will be held Wednesday, and the public is encouraged to treat it like an actual emergency, in order to make sure they’re ready for the possibility of the real thing. Dallas County Emergency Management Coordinator A.J. Seely describes what the process entails. “During the Statewide Tornado Drill, it starts at 10 a.m., and the National Weather Service will issue a watch. At 10:15 they’ll issue a tornado warning, and again this is just a drill, so anybody participating in the exercise is encouraged to take shelter at that time. So at the 10:15 time, we will be sounding the sirens on a countywide basis. So that’ll be a little bit outside of our normal schedule, but it’s all for this drill. To conclude the drill, at 10:35 a.m. the drill will end, so there won’t be an all-clear signal from the sirens. We don’t do that, that’s kind of a common misconception.”

Raccoon Valley Radio will also be taking part in the Statewide Tornado Drill, as we will be running mock Severe Weather Action Team coverage live during that time frame. To hear more from Seely, listen to today’s Perry Fareway Let’s Talk Dallas County program on air and at RaccoonValleyRadio.com.