Office of Emergency Management

Weather

A "Storm Ready Community"
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.

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In 2000, Nashville was the first metropolitan city in the country, and Davidson County became the first county in Tennessee, to be recognized by the National Weather Service as "StormReady." It means the city has an emergency management program that saves lives and property by enhancing coordination and communications efforts in the community before and during severe storms.

To be officially StormReady, a community must:

  • Establish a 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center
  • Have more than one way to receive severe weather warnings and forecasts to alert the public
  • Create a system that monitors weather 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