Tornado Warning Test Startles Some TV Viewers
(CBS) -It was just after 10 this morning when some TV viewers got a scare when their screens suddenly flashed the message: "Tornado Warning." It was all a test, but it wasn't labeled that way.
One person wrote on Facebook: "They scared the elderly by not stating it was a test. It was stupid."
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And in fact, as broadcast the first time, it said "Tornado Warning... National Weather Service issued a tornado warning."
Eric Lenning, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chicago, says the weather service sent out the test, which is done every year as tornado season begins.
"The product that we sent out did have several ways of indicating that it was a test product," he says.
He says once it leaves their building, the weather service has no control over it.
A Comcast spokesman says Comcast broadcast the test exactly as sent by the weather service. That means, apparently, with video declaring a warning but the word "test" only used in audio.
In other words, if you had the sound turned down, you might have thought there was a real tornado.
In other tornado preparedness news, in Chicago tornado sirens were supposed to go off as part of a monthly test.
But a city spokeswoman says new software was installed last month and not all sirens sounded.
