From 11:39 p.m. on Friday to 12:15 a.m. on Saturday, San Marcos experienced a storm with the National Weather Service issuing a tornado warning and recommending to take cover.
According to NWS meteorologist Matthew Brady, there was tornado with peak winds of 110 miles per hour that touched down in Kendall County and continued 20 miles into Comal County to the north of Canyon Lake.
Though the city of San Marcos did not experience a tornado, conditions were such that a warning should have been issued by the city of San Marcos’ Outdoor Warning System; that did not occur.
“We are aware that the outdoor warning sirens did not activate during last night’s weather event, despite San Marcos being located on the edge of a Tornado Warning,” a Facebook post by the city of San Marcos stated on Saturday. “An initial review indicates the issue may be related to a server malfunction.”
Russell Wilde, an official with the city of San Marcos, said the system is now believed to be working as intended, and the city is still working to determine what caused the error.
“As a precaution, our Office of Emergency Management monitored the system throughout the weekend and was ready to respond to any additional weather alerts,” Wilde said. “We can manually activate the sirens … had there been any additional alerts that failed to automatically.”
Wilde said it’s important to note that the goal of the Outdoor Warning System is to allow residents to seek refuge where they can gather additional information from the city website, weather apps or weather radios.
“Ideally people should be prepared with more than one method from receiving emergency alerts,” Wilde said. “The best warning siren is the one most of us carry in our pockets. Everyone is encouraged to sign up for alerts from warncentraltexas. org and be sure to log back in to adjust your settings to make sure your address is correct and you’re getting the alerts you want.”
Find more information about the Outdoor Warning System at this link: sanmarcostx.gov/4434/Outdoor-Warning-System.
