As severe weather becomes more prevalent throughout the spring season, the Perry Police Department shares their strategy to handle it.

According to Police Chief Jim Archer, when rough weather is in the area, officers will monitor the situation closely as they will usually get notified from either the National Weather Service or the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch. He states that there are several locations in Perry that officers will be posted at in order to see incoming weather, which will then act as a way to alert residents.

“Our main thing is to notify those people that are mostly outside that there is weather coming, especially with spring coming around and we have softball, and little league baseball, and high school sports starting. We want to go notify those places, so that’s kind of one of our first things we do if there’s some bad weather coming, we usually head out to those areas and notify the community ‘Hey, there’s a storm coming, you probably need to take shelter somewhere,’ and then our second priority would be to keep our dispatch informed as to what’s going on and that sort of thing.”

Archer notes that the approach to responding to incidents doesn’t change with severe weather, but it’s more staying in contact with the fire department and city crews as it can be a challenge getting around the city with power lines and trees down on the streets. Archer cautions people to stay indoors if the tornado sirens sound as he points out that severe weather can be unpredictable.