Tornado Alert Device TA-01-14

I have 2 of these in two different homes. I decided to get one after experiencing a tornado event at 5am. At the time I had a weather radio and it was on but never alerted. My towns sirens only went off after the tornado had hit a few homes. I lost my balcony and my neighbor lost her roof. It was a very weak tornado but caused lots of damage. I lost confidence in the National Weather Service to alert me and the warning sirens. This device has alerted me several times to sever weather, tornado risks, and tornado. Each time it has been minutes ahead of the National Weather Service. It has allow me the time to take shelter long before sirens go off. I am not sure exactly how this thing works all I can say is it does. I have used it in Iowa, Illinois, and Texas. It really does work and is one of the best things you can spend your money one.One thing I will say is if the wiring in your house is not grounded right or if some other device in your home interferes it will indicate "noise". If your seeing that it will not work in your home. If you find a spot by the window to place it and setups correctly on start up you should have no problem.

Today we had severe weather come through, and it worked perfectly. The weather midland radio went off earlier in the day, alerting us to a severe weather watch being issued in our country. So I started to watch the radar, and at about the same time, I saw a small storm developed about 40 miles away; the bars on the tornado alert started to rise. The tornado alert sounded an alarm of a severe storm, I checked the radar on my phone, and the storm had developed into a cell showing pink in the center. Shortly after, the midland went off, alerting of a severe storm. About 10-15 minutes later tornado alert went off alerting of a tornado; about 10 minutes later, the Midland radio went off, saying there was a tornado spotted about 7 miles north of us. So, after today I can personally tell you that this device works and will give you an alert far before a weather radio alone would.

I own several of these devices and have used them for several years in my home in Maryland, winter residence in Florida, and motorhome. I have found them to be very accurate in predicting severe weather. I'm not an engineer, but I believe it works by detecting and measuring static electricity in the atmosphere. Static electricity is produced during weather events like thunder storms and tornadoes. Tornadoes generate huge amounts of static electricity as they spin and pickup debris. The device must be turned on and working well BEFORE a storm moves in. You can't turn it on during a storm because the atmosphere will prevent the sensors from properly calibrating. Although you'll plug this device into an AC outlet, you should keep a fresh battery installed in case the power goes off. This will keep the device working if you loose power. If you loose AC power, and don't have a battery installed, you cannot restart the device during a storm. A battery will keep the thing working. You must place the device in a window, facing the general direction (if known) of incoming bad weather. There are separate switches to turn on strobe lights and an audio siren. You can turn one or both of these notifications off. This will prevent the strobe and audio alarm from working during severe thunderstorms. Even if these switches are turned off, the device will still activate the strobe lights and alarm if it detects a possible tornado.

I'm a lifelong weather watcher so I was intrigued when I found this device on Amazon. While doing a little research on the unit, I noticed somewhere that it was noted that this is a first of it's kind device available and it uses NASA technology. In the late 1970s I purchased a similar unit that was available for a short time from Sears and featured very similar functions. An amber indicator light indicated lightning flashed and a red light and siren indicated a possible nearby tornado. The unit did work somewhat but was very sensitive and seemed to sound a warning during most thunderstorms and scared the family with false alarms so I retired it from use. I saw this unit advertised and was hopeful that maybe new technology improved the initial idea to make it worthwhile. My initial experience with this present version has been a disappointment. I received the unit on a bright sunny afternoon and set it up following the instructions. The unit seemed to be ready though it was hard to tell because the LCD screen was hard to read without a flashlight. It only lights up for a short time after turning the unit on. I set it up on an end table about 2 feet from a picture window and it seemed to be ready. The following day there was a severe thunderstorm warning issued. My NOAA weather radio sounded the alarm and lit up bright red long before there was any indication of activity on the tornadoAlert device. A short time later the storm was reported at 11 miles from my location and the still dark screen indicated 2 bars and "Not Severe" on the display. The bars eventually got up to all but 2 displayed when there were large flashes near my location but the display was still dark. It seems the LCD display light is all but useless unless there's a tornado, that is if it gets triggered by then. For what this device costs, there should be another switch allowing the user to turn on the display backlight if desired. The bars indicating lightning intensity and other messages are near useless if they can't be readily observed without a flashlight. After spending nearly $100 on this toy, my best advice to anyone considering it is to save your money and buy a good quality NOAA weather alert radio which everyone should have anyway even if this device would work as advertised.After reading through the Amazon reviews again I see that there are 2 versions of this device with the serial number on mine indicating that it has the backlight intentionally disabled unless there is severe weather. Why have a display that can barely be read? The seller should at least make the difference known in the ad and give the customer a choice in the model they receive. I still don't know if the unit works for detecting tornados, probably won't until the roof blows off the house because I can barely read the display without a flashlight. There's another chance of severe weather again tomorrow so I will have another opportunity to see if there's any value to this device before I send it back.