HARRISBURG — On Wednesday at an event at the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, officials from the National Weather Service recognized Pennsylvania as one of only six states in the nation to have all counties achieve StormReady® status.

“PEMA is really pleased to receive StormReady status, something that only six states have,” PEMA Director Randy Padfield said. “It took the commitment and hard work of each of our counties, but because of this achievement, the commonwealth and our communities are now prepared for extreme weather.”

Louis W. Uccellini, Ph.D., director of the National Weather Service, commended the commitment from Pennsylvania’s communities.

“The commitment demonstrated by communities across Pennsylvania to meetStormReady requirements is a recognition that advanced preparation and planning are essential components of protecting the state’s 13 million citizens and 200 million annual visitors from extreme weather events,” Uccellino said.

StormReady uses a grassroots approach to help communities develop plans to handle all types of extreme weather, from tornadoes to winter storms. The 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. To be officially StormReady, a county must:

Establish a 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center;

Have more than one way to receive severe weather warnings and forecasts and to alert the public;

Create a system that monitors weather conditions locally;

Promote the importance of public readiness through community seminars; and

Develop a formal hazardous weather plan which includes training severe weather spotters and holding emergency exercises.

“We are pleased to recognize the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as StormReady, which means that each of the state’s 67 counties across 46,000 miles is prepared for hazardous weather with robust operations and communications plans,” said Barbara Watson, meteorologist-in-charge of the National Weather Service’s Central Pennsylvania Forecast Office.