Why Does the Media Always Portray Storms As a Surprise...

[Matt Tottle]

Yeah but even your "dumb" phone has GPS and text message capability.

John, the problem I see with CMAS is it appears to work off the billing address, not GPS. That wouldn't do any good to someone like my sister and her roomie, whose phones are on my account, but they live in NJ. They're not going to care too much about a tornado warning in KS...

 

[rdale]

CMAS works off towers. So if you drive into an area that is under a warning, the theory is that it will alert you.

 

[Melissa Jablonski]

Yeah but even your "dumb" phone has GPS and text message capability.

John, the problem I see with CMAS is it appears to work off the billing address, not GPS. That wouldn't do any good to someone like my sister and her roomie, whose phones are on my account, but they live in NJ. They're not going to care too much about a tornado warning in KS.

Not really, I don't have a cell phone. My car came with one and gps. I never activated them.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Catastrophic storm damage or casualties will always be a surprise to people because the statistical probability of any individual suffering major damage, injury and/or death from a tornado is smaller than being struck by lightning, getting audited by the IRS, being attacked by a bear, choking on a hamburger, being bitten by a cobra, having a passing truck fling a pebble into a streetlight that then shatters and sends a shard of glass through the open window of a car coming the opposite way causing the driver to spill their coffee and swerve into you head-on, etc. People tend to not, and really should not, worry about every little rare thing that could possibly kill or hurt them.

Unfortunately when a significant tornado strikes a populated area, there are going to be casualties no matter what we do or say - simply because it is a rare event. It's tragic, but I don't believe it is something to get in uproar about. You cannot prepare for every little danger in life, and it's certainly unreasonable to go through effort/expense to prepare for all of the *rare* threats that the world can throw at you. It's difficult enough to prepare for all of the high-risk things. I think our current warning system has advanced enough that those who want to be warned have every tool available to be warned if they choose to prepare. People who are caught without warning cannot blame anyone, but they themselves can't be blamed too much for not preparing for something so unthinkably rare in terms of the chances of it actually happening to them.

I say all this even after three of my family properties were storm-damaged this month.

 

[E. Clark]

I just saw this headline today and was shocked.
Tornado watches, warnings are often false alarms, leading some to dismiss advisories
http://www.wtkr.com/news/sns-ap-nc--severeweather-ambivalence,0,5526153.story

Of course when there is an outbreak there are a lot of watches/warnings. But the effectiveness depends on the nature of the reporting- not the 'number' of them.
I don't believe a plethora of watches/warnings cause people to dismiss them. I believe that it is how it is handled. If your warning gives no pinpoint location and is cut into by a Taco Bell commercial and interspersed with sports scores, people are more likely to not take it seriously.
Could you imagine if they had TV news in London during the Blitz and the tv news cut to commercials during the broadcast? Or gave sports updates?

 

[E. Clark]

Yeah, people that live in a cave might have not heard of the threat coming, but you can't tell me that folks in NC had no idea that severe weather was on the way. I refuse to believe that. They just had that "it won't happen to me" mentality.
It wasn't like it was a surprise event. It was forecast days in advance. I just don't feel sorry for people who say they had no warning. It's just a lame excuse.

One problem with these southern states- sand.
It costs a lot more to put in a storm cellar or basement on sandy ground. Sadly, I imagine that many people would have tried to take cover but had nowhere to go. I lived in the south for 5 years after growing up in the midwest. In those 5 years I only was in one house that had a basement and the gentleman had to pay dearly to have it put in when the house was built.

 

[Isaac Pato]

I just saw this headline today and was shocked.
Tornado watches, warnings are often false alarms, leading some to dismiss advisories
http://www.wtkr.com/news/sns-ap-nc--severeweather-ambivalence,0,5526153.story

At the end of the article they write: "North Carolina had 571 tornado watches and only 26 touchdowns in 2010. On Saturday, 28 tornadoes hit, killing at least 24."

Where did they get this horribly inaccurate information? It looks completely made up, and they obviously mixed up their definition of watches and warnings too. The Raleigh NWS issued 27 tornado warnings in 2010, and 9 verified.

http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/co...&wtype[]=TO&hail=1.00&lsrbuffer=15&ltype[]=TO

 

[E. Clark]

At the end of the article they write: "North Carolina had 571 tornado watches and only 26 touchdowns in 2010. On Saturday, 28 tornadoes hit, killing at least 24."

Where did they get this horribly inaccurate information? It looks completely made up, and they obviously mixed up their definition of watches and warnings too. The Raleigh NWS issued 27 tornado warnings in 2010, and 9 verified.

http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/co...&wtype[]=TO&hail=1.00&lsrbuffer=15&ltype[]=TO

That was the impression I got; that the whole story was made up from fluff. But why would they do that?

 

[Isaac Pato]

It's an AP story too, so it has gone out to many places. I really get frustrated when I see things like this because I think that lives could be saved by better educating people about severe weather rather than complaining about how the NWS issues warnings to a generally clueless public. Why not write an article on what goes into producing tornado warnings.

 

[Greg Blumberg]

Wow Isaac. That's an important point and a good catch. I almost missed that when I skimmed that article. The ironic part is that maybe if the media got their information right, the public wouldn't dismiss the advisories! Thanks for commenting on that article and clearing that up.

While I don't think that weather radios being required by law for everyone will fly, I do believe that business and places where abnormally large populations gather (approximately ~200 people) should be required by law to have weather radios. In my storm chases, I've come across businesses who have no way of alerting employees of bad weather and don't seem to take the action of alerting their employees or their customers. Usually, I take charge in informing these businesses of the situation. Part of my research deals directly with large venue severe weather preparedness/response and problems like this. Some places do a good job at alerting people. Some places don't.

There are substantial differences between a fire alarm and a weather radio. A weather radio can tell you about watches, warnings, and forecasts and then tells you what you should do. It tells you as if a person is speaking to you. A fire alarm makes a beeping sound that tells you if it detects smoke or there's a fire (or in my case when dinner's done.) When a fire alarm goes off, you go outside. When a weather radio goes off you find a place inside that's safe. Which alert methodology here requires less thinking? Which alert methodology here provides less information? Which requires more training/education? Furthermore, I'll throw the concept of a tornado siren into the mix of the questions I just posed.

The question of the response of weather warnings comes down to who is responsible for disseminating the information AND making sure the call to action statements are followed. And that question has way too many different answers.

 

[Mike Smith]

Isaac is right: The inaccurate coverage of storms by the media ("...hit without warning"; "storm was a surprise") reinforces not taking the warnings seriously! It is a significant problem.

 

[John Robinson]

Random Thoughts on "Surprise" Storms

Awhile back, one of the local TV stations interviewed a person who was affected by a tornado. The person said the storm had hit by surprise. It had not; there was a warning with plenty of lead time. I called the station to point this out. Their response: They were simply quoting what the person said and had no responsibility themselves to determine whether what the person said was correct or not. My take was: If someone went to them and said a prominent citizen had murdered someone on the street last night, would the media run with that story with no checking? By the way, I asked the local AP bureau for their take on what the TV station did. They were careful in their reply as the particular TV station was an AP subscriber, but the gist of the response was that what the TV station did was not in line with journalistic principles.

As I write this, there is a Severe Thunderstorm Watch, a Flash Flood Watch, and some Severe Thunderstorm Warnings in effect. The local TV station I was just watching put the severe weather icon up on the screen for a brief period once every 30 minutes. If you were at home, watching this station, and had had damage at your place, would you not think the storm hit without warning when the icon suddenly appeared after the storm had passed?

Saline County (immediately southwest of the Little Rock metro area) is offering a free Weather Radio to every home in the county. In some areas, only about 50% of the people want the free radio. I had mentioned this to someone I knew at the local AP bureau a couple of times and they finally wrote a story about it. The first person they interviewed said NWR had saved his life last time and he was happy to have an NWR receiver. The second person, whose mobile home had previously been destroyed by a tornado, replied that the home he has now (another mobile home) is the home that God always wanted him to have. He said God would not take it away from him and he was not going to worry about severe storms. The third person interviewed was an assistant manager of a small discount store. She said the minute she heard a tornado warning, she went straight to bed as she did not want to know anything about a tornado. Considering these last two folks, is it any surprise that some people are caught unaware when severe weather strikes?

 

[Todd Renshaw]

Awhile back, one of the local TV stations interviewed a person who was affected by a tornado. The person said the storm had hit by surprise. It had not; there was a warning with plenty of lead time.

I wonder if reporters don't ask obvious questions like, "did you hear a siren?" because they'd rather not make a point that people can watch out for their own safety. (The implication is that watching their station is the only way to be warned of such storms.) Most likely, it's just something people say when they're pressed for a quote and a reporter not thinking to dig a little deeper.

 

[Greg Blumberg]

John, that is a fantastic investigation you did with the news station and you care certainly right with your reasoning about a murder. And I will add that the observation about the 30 minute TV alert is alarming and fascinating. Thank you for doing that.

I'd be willing to bet that the reason reporters don't investigate further is because it would make the person who has just suffered (and being interviewed) look bad. That's a jerk thing to do and is adding insult to injury. It's like saying "Well, you should have listened."

Weather is very much a culture/story type thing. It's easily personalized. It's a way people justify weather events.

 

[beaudodson]

This morning, on CNN, a man in Alabama was interviewed by a reporter. Repeatedly, during the interview, the man said they were shocked and surprised - and that they had no warning (at which I was cussing out loud - saying WHAT - you have got to be kidding me - because I knew the NWS had issued warnings well in advance of this storm). This went on for about 1 minute. At the end of the interview, the CNN meteorologist - who I perceived to be a bit irritated by the conversation - asked if the warning sirens went off and if the man heard the sirens. The reporter then repeated the question to the local resident. The main replied that "yes, the sirens went off and we heard the sirens"