this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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Small town I used to live in would run an old air raid siren every single day at noon.
The town I live in would run the tornado/fire siren (it was the same siren but with a different pattern for how long it would be run for to call the volunteer firefighters to the station whenever there's a really bad emergency) as a noon whistle every day. Around 2018 or 2019 they stopped doing the noon whistle, but never instituted regular testing so we've had super irregular tornado sirens when they are needed. During one really bad storm half the sirens failed to go off at all (fortunately the tornados jumped over town. There were tornados west of us, then tornados east of us but somehow none in town) then the following storm the tornados for half the town failed to go off. They've been testing irregularly since then but I'd really prefer if they performed monthly tests
Monthly or even weekly tests are definitely preferable. You don't want to wait until a serious emergency to find out the motor locked up or the controller doesn't work.
It's a common tradition for small towns to keep their old noon whistles going, decades after they stopped being used for their original purpose. There are tons of 1920s, 30s and 40s-era sirens that are still used every day as noon whistles, as well as some Cold War era stuff.
It's interesting that people still ring something around noon. In my European country it's common practice in every town/village (even in big cities) to ring the church bell at 12 o' clock, but that's a tradition from waaaaay back when not everyone could have a timekeeping device. We also have an air raid siren (mostly because of a "nearby" nuclear reactor), which also gets tested, but only about once a month.
EDIT: What the fuck did I do? I just said it was interesting that while in a different form, noon time ringing is still a thing in 2025. Sorry if that offended someone.
Heathen!