Lightning Strike and an Emergency Siren

This, between 2:15 and 2:20 p.m. or so, one of Sauk Centre's emergency sirens went off.

We went to the basement - and after a fairly short interval I checked again. No siren.

I'd taken the alert seriously, since the edge of a very intense patch of rain was just then passing over Sauk Centre.

Still: just one siren? I'd seen a crew working on the siren in the Stearns County Fairgrounds, just south of us - and we should have heard that one loud and clear.

Turns out, according to someone at City Hall, lightning struck one of the town's sirens: setting the thing off. Since the storm has passed now, somebody's probably at the top of that pole already, checking the zapped siren out.

All things considered, I'm very willing to regard the accidental siren as a learning experience: we found out how well the family responds to an emergency situation, and can fine-tune what we do.