APSU given StormReady sign by National Weather Service

Clarksville, TN – Austin Peay State University was designated a StormReady University by the National Weather Service during a brief presentation held Tuesday, May 24th on the main campus.

Larry Vannozzi, meteorologist in charge with the NWS in Nashville, and Tom Johnstone, also with the NWS Nashville bureau, presented APSU Chief of Police Lantz Biles with a StormReady sign to be placed on the APSU main campus.

APSU joins four other universities in Tennessee as StormReady sites: Tennessee Tech University, University of Memphis, University of Tennessee-Knoxville and Vanderbilt University. There are 72 universities in the nation designated as StormReady.

Because of APSU’s efforts to keep the campus informed of weather situations through text, email messages and the outdoor public address system, the NWS awarded the University the StormReady certification.

StormReady is a nationwide community preparedness program that uses a grassroots approach to help communities develop plans to handle all types of severe weather — from tornadoes to tsunamis. The program encourages communities to take a new, proactive approach to improving local hazardous weather operations by providing emergency managers with clear-cut guidelines on how to improve their hazardous weather operations.

To be certified StormReady, a community must achieve the following criteria:

• Establish a 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center
• Have more than one way to receive severe weather warnings and forecasts and to alert the public
• Create a system that monitors weather conditions locally
• Promote the importance of public readiness through community seminars
• Develop a formal hazardous weather plan, which includes training severe weather spotters and holding emergency exercises.