ACA Allertor 125 Tornado Siren Test, Whitefish Bay, WI 1/13/10

Monthly test of the ACA Allertor 125 located at Cahill Park in Whitefish Bay, WI. This siren is controlled by the Milwaukee County Sheriffs office of emergency management. The sirens are tested at noon on the second Wednesday of the month, weather permitting.

Allertor 125s are 10 or 15 hp rotational sirens that produce 125 decibels of sound output as measured at 100. They are most commonly equipped with dual tone 9/12 port rotors, although 10/12, 8/12 and single tone 8 port versions do exist. This one, equipped with the standard 9/12 rotor, sounds to be a 15hp unit running on single phase power. It likely dates back to at least the 1980s, as can be discerned from its Civil Defense stickers and the exposed patches of its original civil defense yellow fiberglass.

This test was a roughly 1 minute alert cycle. A second rotational siren can be heard at 00:30, which sounds like a single tone Penetrator. I think the bluish green looks pretty sharp on this siren, and it looks to have been yellow before getting painted in its current color. This Allertor did not seem to have any problems with ice jamming the rotor despite several inches of snowfall in the week prior to the test.