Waupun Fire Chief uses severe weather knowledge to stay ahead of the storm

Waupun Fire Chief BJ DeMaa used an unconventional method of finding out he needed to warn his community of approaching severe weather.

DeMaa has put in significant time learning how to recognize severe storms based on their appearance on radar, and when he saw what looked to be a supercell with a hook echo, a signature highly related to tornadoes, approaching the Waupun area, his knowledge told him to become extra vigilante of the situation, even though no warnings had been issued for the storm by the National Weather Service.

Knowing many storm chasers broadcast live feeds of the storms they chase, DeMaa took to the internet to look for some well known chasers that may be in the area. His search found a live feed of a chaser on the storm and saw a tornado being broadcast just to the southwest of the city. That’s when the fire chief manually activated the city’s tornado sirens from the fire department.

Normal protocol for sirens would be for the National Weather Service to issue a tornado warning and then the Fond du Lac County Communications Center would activate sirens from the dispatch center.