Delaware County did not see a tornado Tuesday evening, and Delaware County Emergency Management is reporting the warning system is working as intended.
Tuesday evening, a storm system rolled east through parts of central Ohio, including southern portions of Delaware County. Alex McCarthy, director of the Delaware County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said Wednesday morning the county “thankfully” did not have a tornado and no damage was reported.
McCarthy said the DelcoAlert System worked as intended Tuesday evening and clarified who receives notifications and when.
“The tornado warning that was issued covered a small area of Delaware County — mainly Powell and the townships on the southern border of the county,” McCarthy said in an email Wednesday. “People who lived within those tornado warning polygons should have received a notification through the DelcoAlert system as well as an emergency alert from the National Weather Service. People outside the tornado warning polygon, however, generally do not get those alerts.”
McCarthy explained how some areas may have had tornado warning sirens but did not received a notification about a tornado warning.
“The siren system is countywide, so when the tornado warning was issued for part of Delaware County, it triggers all of our sirens,” McCarthy said. “This was problematic last night as much of the population in Delaware County lived outside of the tornado-warned area. We have reached out to our siren vendor (Wednesday) morning to see what options we could pursue to try to section off the sirens so they don’t all go off at once and will hopefully have a solution before too long.”
McCarthy said the tornado watch was countywide so everyone enrolled in the system should have received that notification.
County residents can sign up for the DelcoAlert System at https://emergencycomms.co.delaware.oh.us/delco-alerts/.
Glenn Battishill can be reached at 740-413-0903.
