MANOR, Texas — In Texas, threats of tornadoes are nothing new. But with such rapid growth in the city of Manor, keeping residents safe is more important than ever.
Wednesday night, the Manor City Council approved the purchase of five new tornado sirens that will be constructed across the city. Council members approved a $200,000 distribution for the new storm sirens in the city.
"Currently, the only way we have to notify our citizens of severe storms coming in is through our alert system or social media," a speaker said at Wednesday's meeting.
The proposal, submitted by Manor Police Chief Ryan Phipps, would add the sirens throughout the city – something rarely seen in Central Texas.
"As far as I know, this will be the first one. I believe Round Rock and or Georgetown somewhere over there, I think they're the only one in the whole metro area that has the above warning systems," the same speaker said.
The question that comes with the new sirens is: what is their efficacy?
"If you're sleeping at night and you're not very close to one of those sirens, depending on the wind direction and how high the wind winds are blowing, you may not actually even kind of hear the siren on some given day," said Paul Yura, the warning coordination meteorologist for National Weather Service (NWS) Austin/San Antonio.
Yura said sirens are an extra tool but shouldn't be heavily relied on.
"We typically tell citizens to have at least three ways of getting the weather warnings to you," Yura said.
Those three things are: a phone, a weather radio and live updates from social media and TV.
"That really kind of brings back the importance of having a local TV meteorologist explaining where that possible tornado or where the tornado is, the movement of the tornado and what area of maybe town or the county is going to be affected the most," Yura said.
Yura said sirens can be effective if they are automated and can go off when the NWS releases warnings – something Manor's will have the ability to do. However, some neighbors are expressing concern about the potential noise.
"I'm totally concerned about them being right there in the neighborhood," a neighbor said.
"If they're in a residential area, there's a tornado coming through at 3:00 in the morning, you're going to want it to be loud," responded the speaker.
These sirens are expected to be installed in December.