Yesterday evening’s weather was certainly ominous, no more so than for the University of Maryland. But did the university overreact?

Around 6:35 p.m., university officials sent students and faculty a text message warning that a tornado was set to hit the campus within 13 minutes and that everyone should seek shelter immediately. In a span of 30 minutes, emergency sirens on campus went off four times, students were locked in dorms and the campus bus system shut down. By 7:17, with no tornado threat remaining, the university issued the all-clear. (WJLA has a great timeline of events.)

The problem? At the time, the National Weather Service was reporting a tornado watch, but not a tornado warning. In meteorological circles, there’s a big difference between the two — a tornado watch means that they may be possible over the span of a few hours, while a warning means they’re imminent.

Many were miffed by the university’s reaction, including the Post’s Capital Weather Gang, which tweeted: “We are still unsure why sirens are sounding near UMD. There are NO active tornado warnings right now, and it’s been that way for some time.”

According to the university’s student newspaper, The Diamondback, Maryland officials drew their warning from AccuWeather, which was predicting that a tornado would hit College Park:

“We use a different system,” Limansky said, adding that University Police use the AccuWeather data service, which alerts officials about bad weather and remains in contact throughout the storm. “If you were looking at a map and talking to this guy, you would have done the same thing … They’re consistent, when they say a storm is coming in 16 minutes, it will come in 16 minutes.”

Moreover, the university insists that it had reason to be cautious — it was just over a decade ago that a tornado did hit the university, killing two students, injuring 50 and leaving a trail of damage in its wake.