The city of Aurora encourages all residents to be weather aware and leverage the multitude of emergency notification tools available as severe weather season in Colorado continues.   

Typically defined as May through August, Colorado’s severe weather season can include tornadoes, flash floods, damaging hail, lightning and wind. 

The National Weather Service, weather apps, local television stations and opt-in emergency alert systems can send notifications about impending weather patterns directly to mobile devices, providing real-time safety guidance wherever and whenever weather dangers are present. Aurora residents can sign up for NWS alerts when they register for CodeRED, Aurora’s opt-in emergency alert system that sends targeted, geographically specific notifications, which also include evacuation notices, threat warnings and missing person alerts. Alerts and notifications can be customized to a user's specific needs and preferences.  

Other sources for weather and emergency alerts include National Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) and NOAA weather alert radios.  

Like other cities across the state and nation, Aurora is examining its outdoor siren system due to its aging, sometimes inoperable infrastructure, plus other vulnerability and reliability issues. The current system of sirens was largely installed in the 1980s.

“Outdoor siren systems used to be one of the only ways to warn people to go indoors in times of an emergency and seek additional information from other sources. Today, you can receive emergency alerts with a lot of information from devices in your pocket, your computer, weather radios on your nightstand or alerts on television,” said Matt Chapman, who leads Aurora's Office of Emergency Management. “Those tools are much more useful and reliable than decades-old siren systems that cannot be pinpointed to specific areas and were never designed to be heard indoors. The last thing anyone should do is go outside in severe weather to listen for the sound of a siren.”