[Talk-us] Civil Defense Sirens?

[Ian Dees]

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Jeffrey Ollie <jeff at ocjtech.us> wrote:

> On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 11:46 AM, Ian Dees <ian.dees at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Jeffrey Ollie <jeff at ocjtech.us> wrote:
> >>
> >> With the start of Tornado season in the Midwest upon us, I thought it
> >> would be interesting to map civil defense sirens:
> >
> > That would be fun. I'm up for making that a "US Project of the Week" if
> the
> > international folks aren't willing to help :).
> > Are the rural ones visible from aerial imagery?
>
> Only if you have very very good imagery and know what you are looking
> at.  In Google's higher resolution imagery you can see them if you
> know what to look for and then if there's street view imagery
> available you can confirm.  Obviously you can't trace from Google
> imagery though.  I'd link to an example on Google if people think
> that's appropriate.
>
> > Perhaps we could start
> > researching which states/areas have active sirens?
>
> Well, Iowa for sure and I'm sure most of the states that are in
> "Tornado Alley" have them and are well tested.  In Iowa it's customary
> to test them at noon on the 1st Saturday of the month unless there is
> imminent severe weather.
>
> The folks over on "The Siren Board"
http://www.airraidsirens.com/forums/index.php seem to have done a bunch of
work on this already. At least here in Minnesota they've created a Google
Map with a bunch of pins for sirens they've found.

I believe Minnesota keeps siren locations in some GIS database somewhere.
I've seen the shapefile before but forgot where. I wonder if other states do
the same.
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