Air raid/tornado/fire alarm in town goes off every day at noon and 6pm. You can literally set your clock by it. Almost every small town in SD does it.
Air raid/tornado/fire alarm in town goes off every day at noon and 6pm. You can literally set your clock by it. Almost every small town in SD does it.
Yep, and again at 6:00. Lets farmers know when it's lunch time and ensures the whistle works if needed.
The grumpy old curmudgeon slum lord in town has started paying the church to do Westminster Chimes every hour plus the quarter hour) in an effort to buy a spot in Heaven.
It's noisy here....
That's right, my home town in SE MN has the 6pm whistle as well. I seem to remember that when I was a kid they also blew it at 9pm, which was the curfew time for kids.
I guess I am wondering why the fire department isn't concerned that no body knows why they blow the horn for real instead of testing it!
I had to teach my family what the tornado alarm horn was when we moved. I started my family outside of the tornado lands they had never heard this loud horn at 1pm every first Saturday of the month. So if they hear it any other time the idea is to get inside to the basement as it signals visual confirmation of a tornado touching down.
A co worker said the horn in his WV town was for a fire at the local mine.
Woody wrote: Noon here, every day. Ours is a siren. They use it to summon the volunteers when there is a fire.
That's how it works for the volunteer fire department around here. Tending towards tradition though now-- they invented these things called pagers, and then they invented something called a cell phone.
Candor, NY sounds the fire siren at noon. I can hear it at my parents house several miles and hills away.
I live within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant. They do monthly tests of the sirens. The local fire department, if they do a daily test, I've not noticed it.
As an aside, this thread made me think of Fred Flintstone sliding down the brontosaurus when the whistle sounded. Yabb dabba doo!
Tornado siren tests every day at noon....unless we are having stormy weather at that time.
Was interesting in high school when the noon fire horn went off. It was just behind the school. For at least 5 minutes we all just waited. Bay Shore, LI. Don't know if it still goes off. Been off the Island since the early nineties.
My town, all fire departments blow every day but Sunday at noon. Any other time of day is either fire or weather emergency.
Ya know, I haven't heard one siren or alarm, test or otherwise, since I moved out here...
My hometown FD used to sound the siren at 5pm. Our dog would always go out and try to out-howl it.
Grandparents lived in Youngwood PA. Very large air horn (not the fire siren) everyday at noon. Not sure why unless it was connected to the railroad as Youngwood was a big railroad town.
For a long time after I moved here to Frederick, MD they tested all the fire sirens in the city at noon every day. They were used to summon volunteer firemen until we got paid firefighters. Now days none of the firehouses evn have sirens
When i moved to ohio i had never heard a tornado alert siren. I got to hear the first of my life on its monday test. It was located at the corner of the schoolyard and happened right at recess. 16 years later and i still remember it scaring the hell out of me!
The little town I grew up in had a large ammunition/explosives plant. There was a noon whistle six days a week. If you heard it any other time you counted the number of blasts because that told the volunteer firefighters which quadrant of town the fire was in.
Wall-e wrote: The 12 o'clock whistle was common growing up on Long Island but I don't recall hearing it the last few times I was down there.
I was going to say, pretty sure I remember it from Long Island as well. And it also announced snow days, if I remember correctly.
My small hometown (Broadway,NC) did this. I don't know if they still do. Lucama NC still does it.
We only get the siren around noon on the first wednesday of the month in my town of 1500 in the middle of MN. It is used for tornadoes now. when i was a kid, that same siren blasted whenever there was a fire and my dad had to haul ass down to the fire hall.. they got pagers for the fire fighters sometime in the late 80's, so your only indication that something was actually happening in town were the cars and trucks that belonged to the volunteer firemen hauling ass towards downtown with their hazards on.
The University of Iowa hydroelectric power plant sounds their steam whistle at 8, 12, 1, and 5. Supposedly they stopped it for a while as they don't use it for official time keeping anymore, but the town wanted it back.
Unfortunately, my county sounds their tornado sirens for severe thunderstorms, so 9 times out of 10, there's no tornado. We get tornados... Dumb.
Vancouver B.C.
The horns at Canada Place blow the first four notes of "O Canada" every day at noon.
914Driver wrote: The grumpy old curmudgeon slum lord in town has started paying the church to do Westminster Chimes every hour plus the quarter hour) in an effort to buy a spot in Heaven. It's noisy here....
How does that work - the "plus the quarter hour" thingy????
Westminster chimes is something you get used to, soon enough. My parents have a grandfather wall clock built with the Westminster set-up. I have found myself glancing at it to see the time and realized it was just past twelve o'clock and the damn thing had just rapped-out a twenty-eight beat tune two minutes ago.
This wasn't the topic of discussion I was thinking of when I read the thread title...
But since this is the direction the conversation went, I don't recall it in the Philly suburbs I grew up in. I was a volunteer firefighter in the early 90's, and we didn't do it.
dculberson wrote: The closest we have here is the tornado sirens sounding every Wednesday at noon. There might be some places in town that make sounds every day at noon but I don't know about them! This is not a small town, so I wouldn't hear it if it wasn't close to where I live or work.
That's what happens here too. But only during the season and obviously the weather is clear.
Living in a prison town the steam whistle blows several times a day. Once to indicate count time and twice to indicate count cleared. Most of the time you don't even notice it.
This thread has somehow stuck this song in my head. So... now I'm sticking it in yours. It's a five o'clock world when the whistle blows!
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