At 7:47 p.m., on Sunday, May 8, 2016, Mother’s Day was threatened with automated weather alerts stating, “A tornado warning has been issued for your area. Take shelter immediately. If inside, go to the lowest level, away from exterior walls and windows. If outside and cannot get to a sturdy shelter quickly, lie flat in a ditch or low-lying area.”
The town siren did not sound the alert. The air was calm, with no ominous cloud presence. No deafening roar was heard. Still…it was a believable warning.
A second notice arrived at 8:23, “There is no tornado warning issued currently for Morrison. There was a system error. We apologize for the error.”
On Monday, May 9, Morrison Police Chief Brian Melton reported the problem “was a mapping error, that has since been corrected. It just shows you how advanced the weather alerting system is. It sent out a message to all of us, [even though] it should not have included Morrison. It’s one of the bugs you have to work out in a new [warning] system.”
Surely, it is better to warn our citizens erroneously, than to ignore sending a warning we need.