NWS Joplin Service Assessment is Out

[rdale]

The problem remains how to warn the public so that they take notice. All these years everyone has been saying, if we give people more warning they will seek shelter. Not always they won't.

Actually they will, and this study confirmed it. It said that people who had more than one source of warning, even if it was just the second siren activation, took action. We've been saying for years that people need confirmation to react, and this proved it. Even negative confirmation (restaurant) had a big impact.

So our goal remains getting people more sources of a coordinated warning message.

 

[beaudodson]

The Joplin, MO tornado assessment is a sobering tale of how people react to the warning process. I encourage everyone to email the assessment to their local media outlets, meteorologists, and emergency managers. Get it into the hands of those who are part of the warning process. This is a learning process (which is why we do assessments) and this is but one more "assignment" those in leadership should be encouraged to read. Take some time and post it on your Facebook pages - email it - get it out there.

 

[Mike Smith]

it would appear that apathy and complacency are a major contributing factor. It is a shame that it takes a service assessment after the fact to get this point across. I would venture to say that if you polled folks in any given area where warning sirens are active, that you would get the same kind of response. I have been back to Alabama twice since 4/27, most recently this past weekend, where I visited Pleasant Grove and spent over two hours walking around and speaking with residents who were rebuilding and I got the same impression that I get from everyone I know in Nashville. When the sirens go off, people just typically stand around initially and even comment that "the sirens go off all the time and nothing ever happens".

The problem remains how to warn the public so that they take notice.
How do we change this mindset?

The Joplin, MO tornado assessment is a sobering tale of how people react to the warning process.

While my sample size is 1, a letter I received yesterday pertaining to my book might shed a little light on the subject. Her exact words:

I won your book "Warnings" in a Twitter contest earlier this summer. To say that I was less than thrilled when I saw it would be an understatement.

However, I decided it would be an appropriate read for the weekend of Hurricane Irene's predicted destruction. ...

I still cannot get over the fact that weather forecasting has improved so dramatically in just the last few decades. My generation takes this technology for granted and it was quite humbling to read the stories of how those before us suffered in order for progress to be made.

I have a new appreciation for meteorologists and no longer view them as undeservedly overpaid workers when their forecasts are inaccurate.

I decided to write my book in the wake of the Katrina fiasco. The people what didn't evacuate didn't understand how dire the situation was. Post-Katrina research has confirmed this. The #1 reason people did not evacuate was not poverty or lack of transportation but because they didn't appreciate the level of the threat, i.e., they didn't believe the meteorologist.

While false alarms continue to be a problem and there are some meteorologists who are not as good as others, the profession -- as a whole -- has made tremendous strides in warning accuracy the last ten years. Hurricanes never hit without warning any more and significant tornadoes (as defined by Grazulis) now rarely hit without warning.

It seems to me that the profession needs to start an education program that conveys that storm warnings are now good enough that you ignore them at your peril. Until we get that improved accuracy and reliability across, we are doomed to have these terribly frustrating situations where people lose lives in spite of the warning.




More on the letter is here: http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2011/09/from-warnings-reader-in-lodi-new-jersey.html

 

[Karen St John]

While false alarms continue to be a problem and there are some meteorologists who are not as good as others, the profession -- as a whole -- has made tremendous strides in warning accuracy the last ten years. Hurricanes never hit without warning any more and significant tornadoes (as defined by Grazulis) now rarely hit without warning.

It seems to me that false positives, and not false negatives are the problem in eroding public perception of weather warning efficacy. But prudence should dictate that if a big rotating storm is in the area, you should be taking safety precautions...

If one is in the ocean, and a great white shark approaches...do you wish to bet that he's already had dinner and a dessert?

It seems to me that the profession needs to start an education program that conveys that storm warnings are now good enough that you ignore them at your peril. Until we get that improved accuracy and reliability across, we are doomed to have these terribly frustrating situations where people lose lives in spite of the warning.

I know that many local television stations have an annual program dedicated to severe weather, hosted by the station's meteorologists. This really should be in the schools, too.

I have graduate training in doing history in schools. (Not that there are career positions for doing that, lol.) I am also strongly considering a midlife career change into meteorology (yes, I know it's a hell of a lot of work. I hope so. I like that sort of thing!) Maybe something I can work on...




More on the letter is here: http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2011/09/from-warnings-reader-in-lodi-new-jersey.html[/QUOTE]

 

[Mike Johnston]

As important as evaluation of the warning communication and response is, there was one physical fact in the report that may have been the most relevant of all: the lack of houses with basements in the Joplin area. We can't interview the dead, so it's almost impossible to assign a ratio of lack of response vs. lack of shelter to the fatalities.

On a side note, I found it perplexing that some residents were confused in that when the 3-minute siren ended they thought the threat itself was over. That's hard to understand. Even as 7-yr. olds, when I grew up kids knew that the siren was just an initial alert.

 

[John Farley]

The problem remains how to warn the public so that they take notice. All these years everyone has been saying, if we give people more warning they will seek shelter. Not always they won't. OH, who has never been in a tornado, says that he would probably respond to a warning by going outside to see if he could see it. If he could not, he would assume it was an over reaction. Sad but true and I suppose typical of a great many people, even in regions where tornadoes are not uncommon, like Missouri. (There is also a great reluctance to spend public money on storm shelters - see the response to the local newspaper when a Joplin resident proposed a storm shelter only a few weeks earlier because she felt their town was at risk.) What I found interesting about Joplin is how some residents clearly and deliberately ignored all the warnings, it wasn't a case of not hearing them they ignored them. There are also disputed accounts about how much warning notice was actually issued inside the hospital, it does not seem to have been 20 minutes. Again they seem to have been relying on seeing it first.

How do we change this mindset?

I am not sure this mindset CAN easily be changed. It has been a long-standing finding of research on natural hazards that the first thing people do when they receive any kind of warning is to seek more information/seek confirmation. Thus, for example, if the sirens blow or the weather radio alarms, they go outside and look at the sky or turn on the TV to get more information. Perhaps if the false alarm rate were dramatically lower, this might change, but the fact is that people do not immediately take protective action when they hear about a danger, but try to confirm that the danger is real. Now, one thing that WILL help them take action sooner is multiple sources of information confirming that the danger is real. This is very evident in the Joplin service assessment, and it shows the benefit of things like TV stations going wall-to-wall and showing towercam pictures - when the danger is real. In general, the more ways hazard information can be conveyed, the better.

The problem is, though, that, as others have pointed out, we don't have the technology to lower the false-alarm rate and keep the detection rate where it is. Hence, the TV stations don't always know when the situation warrants wall-to-wall coverage and when it doesn't. Less warning in marginal-danger situations might help, but then people will complain when they get hit by a tornado in one of these marginal situations (which WILL happen sometime, somewhere) that they had no warning. Hence, there is no magic bullet.

 

[Elaine Spencer]

If you haven't done so already, I urge you to read, as a follow-up to this assessment, the Esquire magazine story on the people who took shelter in the convenience store cooler (Mike Smith has posted a link to it at the end of the main Joplin tornado thread). It's a really gripping story that explains who each of the people were, how they came to be there, and what they were thinking in those moments captured on video when they all thought they were going to die.

One thing I garnered from the story was that the confirmation of a weather threat that gets people to take protective action does not necessarily HAVE to come from the NWS or from some authority... it simply has to come from someone they trust, or from their own instincts.

Case in point: one of the convienience store survivors was a 16-year-old girl who was watching TV at her father's apartment (which had no basement) and saw the tornado warning with a color radar display in one corner of the screen. She noticed an unusual pink color (indicating extreme storm intensity, or perhaps rotation) in the radar echo heading straight for Joplin, and she texted a friend of hers who was a "weather geek," asking if "pink is bad." When her friend messaged back, "Yes, pink is very bad," she told her dad and her siblings it was time to find shelter elsewhere -- and it was good that they did since her dad's place was totally destroyed.

What I gather from this account is that "weather geeks" like you and I can serve as the necessary "confirmation" for people we know who are attempting to assess whether or not they should take shelter. You don't have to be an emergency manager or meteorologist to be a lifesaver in these kind of situations -- just a concerned friend or loved one.

 

[Andrew Burnett]

the warning system has to be suplemented somehow by social media.. ie twitter or facebook. A tornado report by 5 of your friends in town will be taken much more serious than a blaket NWS warning. I lived in a town that was borderline criminal in it;s handling of warnings, folks ignore the sirens and we were hit by a tornado only 11 years ago. Too many bs warnings, that even the village idiots can recognize.

To me social is the only way to reach more people more effectively. Software filters can be put in place to prevent false reporting.

 

[J Tyler]

People ride motorcycles every day without helmets, go boating without wearing life jackets, and driving without wearing seatbelts. Their behavour leading directly to their death. Government passes laws REQUIRING you to do these things, and people still don't do it and die. You can not save people from themselves. Some people who DO wear helmets, life jackets, and seatbelts still die.

Severe weather fatalities are the same. Some people refuse to take the warnings seriously and die. There will always be a certain percentage of the population that will ignore danger. Other people do exactly as they are supposed to, and still die if they do not have access to a safe room or underground shelter. When a large, strong tornado enters a population center, there will be loss of life.

 

[rdale]

the warning system has to be suplemented somehow by social media.

I think it is - but I can't imagine the number of people glued to Twitter after hearing a tornado warning for their town is even close to significant enough. And if I see an EF4 coming down the street, the last thing I'm going to do is tweet about it. I'm hitting the deck...

Software filters can be put in place to prevent false reporting.

Sounds interesting - but how would that work?

 

[Bob Hartig]

People ride motorcycles every day without helmets, go boating without wearing life jackets, and driving without wearing seatbelts. Their behavour leading directly to their death. Government passes laws REQUIRING you to do these things, and people still don't do it and die. You can not save people from themselves. Some people who DO wear helmets, life jackets, and seatbelts still die.

Severe weather fatalities are the same. Some people refuse to take the warnings seriously and die. There will always be a certain percentage of the population that will ignore danger. Other people do exactly as they are supposed to, and still die if they do not have access to a safe room or underground shelter. When a large, strong tornado enters a population center, there will be loss of life.

I agree completely. However, that wisdom can lapse into a fatalistic mindset that nothing more can be done. I think it's important that the NWS continues to seek ways of improving the survival rate. As has been mentioned, this seems to largely involve educating public officials and the public itself. Joplin has provided a tragic case study of what happens when a) warnings are ignored or response is delayed, and b) shelter is inadequate. While the technical end of warnings will no doubt continue to improve, it's already pretty darn fantastic, light years beyond what it was back during the 1974 Super Outbreak. The big challenge today is the sociological side. Joplin has made that plain.

 

[rdale]

Jon Davies is a madman...

http://davieswx.blogspot.com/2011/09/additional-look-at-joplin-tornado-after.html

 

[Mike Johnston]

WRT the service assessment's suggestion that perhaps more enhanced wording (tornado emergency, etc.) could have been used in this situation, I also noticed that they mildly scolded the Springfield office for not using more frequent radar scans at the lowest levels which may have better indicated the developing rotation and prompted recognition of a more serious situation. Now, they used some technical terminology in this regard that I wasn't able to fully understand. Perhaps someone else following this thread has better knowledge of what exactly the report was saying and translate it for us laymen?

 

[rdale]

The VCP they were in takes 30 seconds longer to do a volume scan. http://www.wdtb.noaa.gov/buildTraining/Build9/pdfs/VCP_Comp_Table.pdf

 

[Mike Johnston]

The VCP they were in takes 30 seconds longer to do a volume scan. http://www.wdtb.noaa.gov/buildTraining/Build9/pdfs/VCP_Comp_Table.pdf

So, was this an accuracy vs. timeliness tradeoff, or do you think the service assessment was correct in their finding that the quicker volume scans should have been the mode? I guess what I'm trying to understand is whether it was a judgement call on the part of the Springfield office, or a professional error?