Kent County recently received its StormReady certification from the National Weather Service (NWS), making Maryland the eighth state to have all of its local jurisdictions be certified as StormReady. The program was started by the NWS in 1998 and uses a grassroots approach to help communities develop plans to handle all types of extreme weather—from tornadoes to winter storms. To qualify as StormReady, a community must: establish a 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center; have more than one way to receive severe weather warnings and forecasts to alert the public and create a system that monitors weather conditions locally.