MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP - There's a new buzz going around town, but you probably won't hear it. Meridian Township has new tornado siren technology and it's silent.

"Right now we test them the first Saturday of every month at one o'clock and you will still hear them go off, on every other Saturday we do what's called a silent test and what that means is through the computer system we can send out a signal to each siren, we spin them to make sure that they're still spinning, and then we blow air through them to make sure there's no birds nests or anything that's gotten into them," explains Meridian Township's Chief of Training and EMS Operations, Bill Priese.

The $47,000 project included replacing two older sirens, installing a new siren at the Harris Nature Center, which also works to send messages across the park, and a two-way radio system allowing the Fire Department to monitor all five of Meridian Township's Sirens 24 hours a day. $15,000 was provided by the Office of Emergency Management out of Ingham County.

And if you do hear a siren:
"Well, if you hear a siren, it's a tornado, we want you to take cover go down into your basement away from windows, you know, any area that's kind of closed off or concealed," said Priese, "if you don't have a basement, generally bathrooms are the places people go."

You may be able to hear these sirens from over two miles away, but just in case you could sign up for mobile alerts.

"I've been getting these alerts on my phone in the middle of the night and of course i am traumatized, I wake up, scream a little bit, look at my phone to figure out what's going on if I need to be running," says East Lansing resident Daphnie Whitfield, "this last time they were in the middle of the night off my phone at least three to four times, so that was kind of nerve-racking but i mean it's all good cause I needed to know"