Minnesota’s Severe Weather Awareness Week

How fitting that we're expecting a snowstorm during Minnesota's annual Severe Weather Awareness Week.

Normally, the National Weather Service will hold statewide tornado drills. However, since a Blizzard Warning goes into effect tonight at 7 p.m. for parts of Minnesota, they've canceled the statewide drills. Some local counties will still be holding their own tornado siren testing tomorrow at 1:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. During this time you're still encouraged to talk to your family about your severe weather safety plans. Schools and local places of employment are also encouraged to practice their weather plans too.

Each day this week focuses on a different weather related topic. 

Monday--Alerts and warnings
Tuesday--Severe weather, lightning and hail
Wednesday--Floods
Thursday--tornadoes
Friday--Extreme heat

We live in the digital age, so the NWS has a few tips for people to consider making part of their awareness week preparation.

• Put emergency contacts in your phone and label them as such
• Turn on your alerts and warnings notifications
• Put your family's emergency meeting spot as a favorite location in your phone
• Save your important documents on a secure flash drive or password protected cloud