Wabash County officially received Storm Ready status Monday when officials from the National Weather Service and Illinois Emergency Management Agency traveled to Mount Carmel to present a certificate and road sign to County Board Chairman Rob Dean. Rick Shanklin of the weather office in Paducah said the designation is an important one….

StormReady is a national program unveiled by the National Weather Service in April 2000. A community must achieve a specific level of hazardous weather operations readiness in order to be accredited as StormReady. Wabash County Emergency Management director Gerald Brooks thanked the agency’s volunteers for the hard work in achieving the designation.