Sirens in Lee’s Summit and across Johnson County were silent during Monday night’s storm.
On Tuesday, the National Weather Service confirmed an EF-1 tornado touched down in Lee’s Summit, while 80-85 mph straight-line winds did damage at the Johnson County Executive Airport and an EF-0 tornado damaged homes in Leawood’s Steeplechase subdivision.
Across Jackson County, individual municipalities hold the responsibility for activating the sirens. Lee’s Summit Assistant Fire Chief Jim Eden said the sirens were not activated because radar at the time was not showing indications of a tornado, and spotters on the ground didn’t confirm seeing the tornado.
Eden told 41 Action News other notification systems including Nixle and NOAA’s weather radio alerts were activated.
In Johnson County, Emergency Manager Dan Robeson said the criteria to activate their sirens were not met.
“We do that when there is a tornado warning issued by the National Weather Service or one of our trained certified weather spotters identifies a tornado,” said Robeson. “We did not activate the sirens last night because though we had spotters deployed, 10 of them throughout the county last night monitoring the weather, they did not see any tornados form their vantage point.”
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Brian Abel can be reached at brian.abel@kshb.com.
