When a tornado touched down in a Northland neighborhood at 2 a.m. Friday, officials didn't sound any sirens.

Sirens in Gladstone, Mo., and Independence, Mo., weren't activated either.

Thursday, Kansas City metropolitan area emergency management officials got together to address the issue.

They said the tornados materialized out of a bow echo situation. There were severe thunderstorm warnings, which means conditions were ripe for tornados to form, but there were no funnel clouds spotted on radar in time to sound the sirens.

The National Weather Service and the Clay County Emergency Management director said Thursday that they couldn't sound the sirens every time there was a bow echo.

"If we warned for tornados the whole time the bow echo is in existence, we are going to get a lot of people over-warned. We could throw out 20 warnings and maybe get one of them right, and when we do that, we desensitize the public," said Andy Bailey, of the National Weather Service.

D.C. Rogers, of Clay County emergency management, said they didn't want to "cry wolf."

"If we set them off too many times people aren't going to pay attention to them," Rogers said. "We actually have that problem now."

The experts said NOAA weather radios were the solution. They said residents should have them in their homes.

In the case of Friday's storms, 15 minutes before the tornado hit, the alert went out that hurricane force winds were moving into the area. That would have given the home owners the warning they needed, officials said.