The Kansas Turnpike Authority sent out two tornado warnings on social media and via text Tuesday night, however a tornado was not spotted.
The KTA uses a commercialized weather service called AccuWeather to pinpoint bad weather by mile markers, not the National Weather Service.
Shawnee Emergency Management Director Dusty Nichols and others took to Twitter to question why the KTA sent out the warning even though the Nation Weather Service did not issue one.
One person tweeted, "inaccurate information is worse than no information." Others reached out to Nichols asking why sirens for the county were never sounded.
"When you put out information that is not valid or not true pretty soon it is going to dilute that message," said Nichols.
This is not the first time the KTA has tweeted out an inaccurate warning. It happened last fall, and then again a few weeks ago.
On Wednesday, the KTA announced it will not be sharing AccuWeather warnings via text alerts or on social media. Instead, it will provide the information on road signs only.
"We understand there has been conflicting information. We have two great entities, National Weather Service, we have AccuWeather, that sometimes don’t agree on the same information," said KTA CEO Steve Hewitt.
Despite the false alarm, Nichols said any time you hear of a warning you should take cover.
"If you have faith in a system or faith in an agency and you're following them and they put out a tornado warning, take cover first and then seek information. It would be awful for me to think that we are telling people not to take cover when AccuWeather is putting a tornado warning," said Nichols.
Nichols said he and the KTA are working on setting up a time to sit down and talk more on how to safely warn people of severe weather.
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Ali Hoxie can be reached at ali.hoxie@kshb.com
