ATU Maintains NWS StormReady Recognition

ATU Storm Ready Certification 2025
Photographed: Lance Pyle (left) and Heath Whorton (right).

Arkansas Tech University has completed the steps necessary to extend its National Weather Service StormReady designation through September 2028.

Lance Pyle, senior forecaster for the National Weather Service office in Little Rock, presented the certification to Heath Whorton, ATU emergency manager.

Requirements to become NWS StormReady include:

  • Establish a 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center.
  • Have multiple ways to receive severe weather warnings and forecasts/alert the public.
  • Create a system that monitors weather conditions locally.
  • Promote the importance of public readiness through community seminars.
  • Develop a formal hazardous weather plan, which includes training severe weather spotters and holding emergency exercises.

According to the NWS, the StormReady program “encourages communities to take a new, proactive approach to improving local hazardous weather operations by providing emergency managers with clear-cut guidelines on how to improve their hazardous weather operations.”

ATU first earned the NWS StormReady designation in 2017.

Learn more about the NWS StormReady program at www.weather.gov/stormready.

Learn more about the ATU Department of Public Safety at www.atu.edu/psafe.