This is a test.

This is a test of the Emergency Alert System. This is only a test.

Had this been an actual emergency, this alert would have been followed by information.

Not information like the information we’re giving you now about the emergency alert system’s information, but actual information about the actual emergency that we would have actually been alerting you about.

Which we aren’t. Because this is only a test.

But if it hadn’t been, we would have been giving you actual, factual, useful information to use in the case of the actual emergency that we would have been alerting you to.

But we aren’t.

So we’re  giving you this other information in the interim in the interest of informing you of the information you’d be getting if this were an actual emergency.

It isn’t.

This will have only been a test.