Severe Weather
What is a Tornado Watch?
Watch: Be Alert and tune into a weather alerting system including tv, social media, radar or your NOAA weather radio. This means severe storms or tornadoes MAY form and affect your area.
Warning: Take Action! A severe storm or tornado is expected in your area!
An easy way to remember this difference is that a Watch has all of the ingredients in the atmosphere for a tornado, much like baking a cupcake. A warning is when the tornado sirens are activated and time to take action for shelter.
Tornadoes are classified by the amount of damage they cause and by wind speed. The Enhanced Fujita Scale or EF scale has six different categories.
Once significant severe weather occurs in our area, the Village of Hanover Park will conduct a preliminary damage assessment and report the findings to the National Weather Service. The following day, the National Weather Service may conduct their official Damage assessment and report their findings.
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