Weather warnings are Tuesday’s focus during Severe Weather Awareness Week, and there are several options to be notified whenever a storm watch or warning has been issued.

During the warmer months the notifications include watches and warnings for severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and flash flooding. Adair and Guthrie County Emergency Management Deputy Coordinator Jeremy Cooper says there are many ways to receive these messages, including local media and weather radios, “We have Alert Iowa locally, that’s available that people can sign up for. The thing is with those alerts is most of them you have to sign up for. Now your cell phones are automatically programmed if there is some sort of emergency, you’re going to get a tornado warning, but that’s if you have service, too. And in rural Guthrie County and Adair County, sometimes your service is in-between. So you can’t always count on that and you don’t want to count on one source. Have as many as you can, the more the merrier.”

Alert Iowa is a free service used by state and local authorities to disseminate information through voice, text, and/or email. Adair and Guthrie county residents can sign up here. To learn more about severe weather and ways to prepare, listen to a two-part Let’s Talk Guthrie County interview with Cooper at raccoonvalleyradio.com. Listen to Raccoon Valley Radio for live coverage from our Severe Weather Action Team whenever a tornado or severe thunderstorm warning is issued for Dallas, Greene, or Guthrie counties.