It’s severe weather awareness week in Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee.

The National Weather Service’s Memphis office will blitz the airwaves and plan activities all week to help educate residents on the various things that are crucial to know prior to the spring hazardous weather season arriving.

This year the NWS has a social media element up its sleeve to engage more residents, including the younger generation. A tornado drill is planned for 9:15 a.m. Wednesday   using the NOAA Weather Radio weekly test message, but to reach out to the more tech-savvy individuals, NWS is using Twitter. Meteorologists will ask residents to tweet a picture of themselves (a safety selfie) in their safe place and use the  hashtag #safetyselfie. NWS will then retweet the best ones they see.

Public information statements will be blasted out on Facebook and Twitter and even some videos will wind up on You Tube. If you don’t already follow the NWS on your favorite social media engine, now is the time to hit that add or like button.

Take some time to refresh on the weather terminology like warning and watch. It never hurts to brush up on what the beginning stages of a funnel cloud look like also.