Re: New tornado warnings aim to scare?
Posted by
Chris in Tampa on 4/2/2012, 12:12 am
I have a feeling the article uses "unsurvivable" as an incomplete example of how it would be presented. (makes an interesting headline to click on) If a tornado warning were to say this tornado is unsurvivable, it sounds like there is no point in doing anything because you are not going to survive. Obviously that is not what is intended. But I do mostly agree with other parts of the language. There may be some meteorologists who are not great at determining how powerful a tornado might be when looking at it on radar and don't get the best information out to viewers. It would help them to make statements that they otherwise might be afraid to make or just can't make because they don't have time to get a good understanding of the situation. However, anytime there is a tornado warning people need to act. (A warning is always when a tornado is either actually spotted or indicated on radar so I would always take a warning very seriously.) You don't wait until the scary words are in there. A tornado can change in an instant and you will not have many minutes, if any, to act anyway. For a hurricane warning you get ample time to make decisions. For a tornado you usually just need to assume the worst because you don't have time to really know. The tornado could be much more destructive in just seconds and the more informative warning will reference something that may or may not still be accurate. Of course they would need to keep updating that constantly. I assume there would be extra language when it is bad, not when it is weaker. I don't even want to hear that it is a somewhat dangerous situation rather than extremely dangerous as you would have ignorant people doing very stupid things.
An EF0 could kill you if you simply ignore the warnings. An F0 tornado hit my neighborhood on June 27th, 1994. (PDF about it) It was eight houses from me. It was a weak tornado but the article talks about one neighbor who had an 8 inch piece of cement tile go through his glass bedroom doors. That is why tornadoes should always be taken seriously no matter what kind of tornado is expected. So while I do like the idea of more detailed warnings so that you know when something really bad is on the way, you do need to take all of them seriously.
I don't live in an area that gets false sirens. We don't have any I don't think. (Some people think we do but I seriously doubt that and if there were they would not work because they have never been tested.) I can understand the extra language added for people who do get false sirens. You need something to get those people's attention. That would be disseminated to most through the television media since there would not be much time for many people to get it directly from NOAA unless you have a weather radio. Hopefully someone's first thought upon hearing a siren would be either take shelter or turn on the TV or radio to find out more and not ignore it because they think it is false. Otherwise, the extra language would do them no good as they would never get it.
I'm not sure if any usage of the word "unsurvivable" would be good though. A mobile home would be extremely close to being "unsurvivable" in very powerful tornadoes. Maybe if it was something like "nearly unsurvivable". The example they give will hopefully have a tiny bit more. "THIS IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TORNADO WITH COMPLETE DEVASTATION LIKELY. ... SEEK SHELTER NOW! ... MOBILE HOMES AND OUTBUILDINGS WILL OFFER NO SHELTER FROM THIS TORNADO - ABANDON THEM IMMEDIATELY." Abandon them to where? A car? No. Of course you do need a short message as there is very little time, but it should offer a little more to that I think. Of course it is hard to suggest an alternative if there is no safer structure very close by or no ditch. I'm not sure what you should do if you were in a mobile home and did not have somewhere else to quickly get to or a ditch. |
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