I spent the first 15 years of my life living a few houses down from one of these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNr7EZvf-rU
(I still remember the big "SIRATONE" placard that was on it)
No matter how many times I've heard it, it never ceased to give me the creeps. To me it sounded like a giant version of the Emergency Broadcast System tone that the TV and radio would play whenever bad shit was about to go down.
Oh, and apparently there's a big community of siren enthusiasts from what I've seen of the YouTube related videos.
Of all the things for a person to have an interest in, tornado sirens are the most puzzling. I mean, I only searched for them because I was feeling nostalgic about my childhood nightmares.
Yeah I grew up on the West Coast so I'd never heard it.. maybe an air raid test siren once a year but that was miles away. When I moved to Madison Wisconsin the dorm I lived in my first semester was right next door to one of the tornado sirens and they'd test it every friday in the fall. :(
Back in the 80s the town I grew up in still tested their old air raid siren once a year. They also had a massive fog horn that you could hear from anywhere in town, and blew it early in the morning any time the public school was closed for weather.