After the devastation of last year and with tornado season in full swing, researchers are looking to five National Weather Service stations in the Midwest to prevent storm fatalities by revolutionizing the severe weather warning system nationwide.
The current system uses television spots, radio airwaves and sirens to issue a generic warning to the public. These warnings often precede storms that produce minimal damage, which has caused many citizens to ignore the well-intentioned signals.
Meteorologist James Spann of ABC 33/40 in Birmingham explained Alabama’s false alarm ratio, a number that compares storm predictions to actual occurrences, is around 80 percent, which he believes is far too high.
“We have learned that many people don’t do anything when a tornado warning is issued,” he said. “The idea is that if the risk can be well defined in the tornado warning message, it will prompt people to take action.”
After the destructive tornadoes that spun through the Southeast and Midwest late last spring, meteorologists and scientists addressed the necessity for a revised warning system based on the idea of influential verbiage.
“Average people don’t understand the effects of severe weather,” said John De Block, warning coordination meteorologist with the NWS. “When we say, ‘Winds up to 60 mph,’ people don’t really understand what that means, but when we say, ‘There’s a possibility of fallen trees,’ or, ‘Trampolines may fly through the air,’ people seem to understand that. We want to give people more knowledge of the impacts of our forecasts.”
Five NWS stations in Kansas and Missouri are now the foundation of a six-month experiment on a new system that will use blunt language to inspire self-protection.
This enhanced diction will include a two-level warning system for storms and a three-level warning system for tornadoes based on expected severity. Vivid phrases such as “catastrophic,” “complete destruction” and “unsurvivable” will be employed to accurately convey the dangers of the coming storms.
“This is really groundbreaking,” De Block said. “As physical scientists, we know what we want to convey, but we are not very good at communicating it. With this research, we are having sociologists look at people’s reactions and how they respond to figure out the best way to communicate.”
De Block explained that researchers will study the results after this trial period and decide whether to enact the change in other parts of the country as well.
Chelsea Thrash, a junior majoring in biology, suffered major injuries to her back and legs after being trapped under the debris of her home following the April 27 tornado in Tuscaloosa. She hopes that these possibly permanent changes to the warnings will alter the persistent unconcerned ideology of the community.
“I was watching the broadcast of the storm later in the day before it hit Tuscaloosa,” she said. “Once I saw it crossing the Black Warrior River, I went nonchalantly to hide out the storm in my bathroom. Although I did technically act upon the warning, I acted upon it way too late and too lightly. It seems that it has always been a cry-wolf situation.
“I think many people in the Tuscaloosa area will act on this new system because they have experienced firsthand the devastation tornadoes can cause and what ignoring one can do, not only to yourself, but to your community as well.”
However, De Block remains hopeful that the language of the new warnings doesn’t cause confusion among the public.
“Our hope is that people will hear the warning and take action,” he said. “We are trying to solicit the best response that we can through our wording.”
