NWS Amarillo continues leading communities in the Weather-Ready Nation effort.  As part of this effort, Cimarron County, OK officially became a StormReady county during a ceremony on August 6, 2012.  Being recognized as StormReady, residents across Cimarron County will now be better prepared when severe weather threatens.

StormReady, a voluntary program, is designed to help communities take a proactive approach to the kinds of severe weather that affect their area by improving local hazardous weather operations and heightening public awareness.  Communities work with the local National Weather Service office and state and local emergency managers to become StormReady.

The program was started by the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Tulsa as an effort to educate residents about storm safety.  It is now expanding nationwide in an effort to spread information about severe weather preparedness and what to do when severe weather strikes.

For a county or community to be recognized as StormReady, it must meet predetermined criteria as set by national, regional, and local StormReady advisory boards.  The criteria includes such things as a 24-hour warning point and/or emergency operations center, promote the importance of public readiness through community seminars, 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, and develop a formal hazardous weather plan (e.g. training severe weather spotters and holding emergency exercises).

The goal of achieving StormReady status is to increase the chances of local citizens surviving a tornado, hurricane, flash flood, tsunami, or any other type of severe weather that threatens their area of the country.  Tornadoes and severe thunderstorms are the primary focus of the Amarillo StormReady program.