National Weather Service United States Department of Commerce

As part of the Missouri and Kansas Severe Weather Preparedness Week, a test Tornado Warning was sent out at 10 am CST this morning. Typically, this warning is used to test NOAA Weather Radios, the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and serves as an opportunity for local jurisdictions to test their outdoor warning sirens. However, this year the test Tornado Warning also activated the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system which sends alerts to many cellular devices. When this WEA alert was issued, there was no wording indicating this was a test Tornado Warning. We have started an investigation into why the WEA system was activated. We sincerely apologize for any confusion.