Lubbock County Deemed “Storm Ready” by National Weather Service

At this week's County Commissioners' Court meeting, the National Weather Service recognized Lubbock County as being Storm Ready.

Warning Coordination Meterologist for the NWS Forecast Office in Lubbock Jody James explained the history of the Storm Ready program, as well as its intentions.

"Storm ready is a program that started back in 1999 at the Tulsa Oklahoma weather office. What we did with the program is develop a set of recommendations that we recommend to a city or county. If they will implement these practices, we think the county will be better prepared when severe weather hits.”

NWS recommendations include having multiple modes of receiving important information from the National Weather Service, having many different ways of disseminating information to the public, and conducting and keeping track of severe weather training. “Our feeling at the national weather service is that we like as many ways to notify people as you can have. You can't have too many ways to let people know a tornado is headed towards their house,” says James.

Lubbock County is one of the few 1,800 communities in the nation to achieve Storm Ready status. 14 of those recognized communities are within the Lubbock National Weather Service Warning Area. Lubbock County makes the fourth recognized entity in the county with a weather ready status, preceded by Ransom Canyon, the City of Lubbock and Texas Tech University.