Teen storm chaser bringing mobile tornado siren to Cut Knife

Aaron Rutley’s fascination with storms started at a young age, and now the 18-year-old storm chaser is putting that interest into action.

On April 27, he’ll be testing his mobile tornado siren in the Town of Cut Knife to see how well it can warn residents during severe weather.

Read more:

The idea first began in 2020 when Rutley’s ranch was hit by a tornado.

“We had no warning for it whatsoever. There was no tornado warning; it came out of the blue. It was very weak, but you could see the funnel cloud reach down and all the debris started flowing around, and it did a little bit of damage.”

That made him wonder how many other people have been affected by tornadoes in rural Saskatchewan with no warning.

Aaron Rutley is an 18-year-old storm chaser from Cut Knife. (Aaron Rutley/Submitted)

“I kind of came up with the idea that we could have tornado sirens like they do in the United States. But after doing research, I found out that it’s extremely expensive to get sirens in every single town, and that’s just per town. There’s still a lot of people in very tiny farming communities, and even just singular farms,” Rutley said.

That’s when his idea of mounting a tornado siren to the roof of his storm chasing truck popped into his head.

“If we had a siren, it just gives us a backup plan in case people don’t have the warnings, or they don’t even take them seriously, things like that. It’s just a definite, ‘Okay, this is a bad situation. We should get to shelter right now.’”

His test on Monday will allow him to experiment with equipment while showcasing the specific siren sound to residents. Community members will be located around the town and will record the sound from their phone.

“We’re going to see what areas you can’t hear it, what areas you can, just see how well that the actual sound carries, just so I know how much of the town I have to drive around in the event that there is a real emergency.”

For now, Rutley’s plan is to have the siren based in his home community of Cut Knife, but he’ll also travel to communities in the area since it’s something he already does during storm chasing.

“I hope to have more than one region where the sirens will be operated out of and then have maybe one or two units per those regions,” he said.

Rutley acknowledged that a bigger version of the project would not be realistic right now, and it would require an outside source of funding, especially since he has paid out of pocket for the first model.

“If this does end up being a larger project that ends up being implemented into more areas of Saskatchewan, anybody who hears the siren should know; if you are under a storm or a storm has just passed…go to shelter and stay in there until the storm itself has passed.”

Read more: