Imagine you’re sitting on the couch scrolling through TikTok on your phone, and you think you hear a siren. You ask your spouse if they hear it too, but they aren’t sure. “It’s probably the kids’ tablets,” they say. It’s windy outside, and the sky is kind of dark, but you can’t tell for sure if that’s what it is. You yell for everyone in the house to stop making noise. That only creates more noise as everyone asks “why?”. Then the kids start arguing with each other, and it’s a whole thing. The entire time there’s a tornado barreling down on you, and you don’t even know. Maybe that’s an extreme example, but I feel like that’s definitely happened in my house minus the actual tornado.
I don’t want to speak for everyone so I’ll just say that I don’t pay much attention to the weather, I don’t have cable, and I live far enough away that the weather alert sirens in town aren’t very clear at my house, especially if it’s windy. That’s why I’m so happy that Mineral Wells uses a service that sends alerts to my phone and email anytime there’s any notable weather events. Have you guys heard of and signed up for Everbridge through the city of Mineral Wells website? If not, I think you should. I’ve been using it for a while, and it’s super helpful to get a text letting me know whether there’s a weather watch or warning. It’s good to be prepared even if it’s only emotionally. Everbridge isn’t only used for the weather either. I received several texts during the icepocalypse about the boil water notice back in February.
I’m sure I’ve sold you on this awesome service by now, and you’re wondering how to opt-in. Well, let me walk you through it. First, click this link. Then, fill out all your information. You can tell it what types of alerts you care about. Flood, fire, smoke, ice, hail, thunderstorms, and yes, tornados. You can choose to get non-emergency notifications as well. There are also free apps on both iOS and Android where you can add other cities that you want to monitor. You can even set times for it to be quiet because you’re trying to sleep. I wouldn’t choose to use that function because I want to know about these things when they happen…even at night, but that might just be me.
Contributor | I was born in Mineral Wells and have lived here all my life so far. I graduated from Community Christian School. I am amazed at the progress this city has made in the last few years, and I want to contribute to that in a positive way. I love writing, photography, music, and listening to way too many podcasts.
