The tone comes from Ryan Hall's severe weather livestreams, where TOR alerts are used to flag tornado emergencies for viewers following radar coverage in real time. Clips and tones from those streams began circulating on soundboards and in short edits, detached from the original broadcast and reused as a standalone alarm. Because the sound is short, loud and unmistakably serious, editors keep using it as shorthand for incoming danger, bad weather or any moment that needs instant urgency without any spoken announcement.