Monday evening was an active night in the weather department as storms rocked the region.
Rain and thunderstorms affected much of the area Monday morning, dropping heavy rain and small hail. Then a second round of storms arrived around 8 p.m. in the evening. It was that round that brought a pair of tornado warnings, several funnel cloud reports, a possible tornado near Rockford, with golf ball and tennis ball sized hail in parts of Mercer County, and numerous reports of 3 to 6 inches of rain and a few stranded and stalled vehicles across the area.
The National Weather Service has confirmed a tornado touchdown in Rockford. It is the first tornado to touch down in Mercer County since May 27th of 2009. It was also the first time portions of Allen County were under a tornado warning since November of 2013, which may be why you heard the sirens for the first time in years.
"With a tornado warning we activate all fifty sirens in Allen County. The reason that we do that is we can't tell exactly the track of where that tornado is going to go, so we can't physically track a tornado and then place sirens off as the tornado is tracking through the county, so we alert all residents. What the sirens do is warn residents to get inside and get to a safe place," explained Director of Allen County Emergency Mgt., Tom Berger.
Tom Berger wants to stress the importance of a new system available for all residents to use to get weather warnings. By heading to www.allen-ema.com and clicking on the Alert Allen County, you can sign up to have weather alerts sent directly to your phone or computer.
