Response to Warnings during the 3 May 1999 Oklahoma City Tornado: Reasons and Relative Injury Rates

Hammer, Barbara; Schmidlin, Thomas W.

doi:10.1175/1520-0434(2002)017<0577:rtwdtm>2.0.co;2

Cited by 95 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…In the same Moore, Oklahoma, tornado, more than half of respondents cited television as their reason for taking protective action (Comstock and Mallonee 2005). An overwhelming majority of respondents surveyed by Hammer and Schmidlin (2002) used television as their warning source, and 35% said that television was their reason for seeking shelter. Many respondents in that study specifically mentioned advice given by Gary England, a long-time local weathercaster in the Oklahoma City area, as their reason for taking protective action.…”

Section: Background Literature a Risk Perception And Response To Sevmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Television has been historically the most common source of both routine (Tan 1976;Lazo et al 2009) and severe weather (Legates and Biddle 1999;Balluz et al 2000;Brown et al 2002;Hammer and Schmidlin 2002;Sherman-Morris 2005, 2010Schmidlin et al 2009) information; and the primary communicator of the weather information on television is the local weathercaster (Wilson 2008). Despite this importance, few studies (e.g., Sherman-Morris et al 2005;Drost et al 2015) have examined the influence that the weathercaster has on factors such as trust in severe weather information, risk perception, behavior, or recall of information.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An exploratory study of the influence of severe weather radar broadcasts

Sherman–Morris¹,

Lea²

2016

J. Operational Meteor.

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The local television weathercaster is an essential communicator of severe weather information to the public, but the impact of the particular aspects of his or her severe weather broadcasts has received little scholarly attention. To fill this gap, the current study examines the influence of two severe weather broadcasts where the weathercaster was located either on or off the screen. Specifically, we examine risk perception, recall, and intent to take protective action from a tornado. Our results indicate that the presence of the weathercaster on-screen did not lead to significant differences in risk perception, behavioral intent, or recall-with the exception of the intent to call someone in the tornado's path to alert them. In this one instance, respondents who viewed a reflectivity video without the weathercaster on screen were more likely to call someone living in a specific location in the video. The video that illustrates risk with a velocity image led to lower overall perceived risk, and less likelihood to take shelter. The differences are most likely related to differences in the spoken message rather than visual differences between the two radar types. This is supported by other differences in risk perception for locations within each video, where locations in the spoken message were rated higher in terms of risk perception and likelihood to take action than locations not mentioned verbally, even when the location verbalized was not labeled on the map.

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Section: Background Literature a Risk Perception And Response To Sevmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An exploratory study of the influence of severe weather radar broadcasts

Sherman–Morris¹,

Lea²

2016

J. Operational Meteor.

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show abstract

“…So the issuance of warnings requires a very fine balance of decision-making that takes into account lead time, climatology, societal risk behaviour, social-economic infrastructure, warning service capacity and many other regional, political and societal factors (Baumgart et al, 2008;Dunn, 1990;Hammer and Schmidlin, 2002;Mercer et al, 2009;Schmeits et al, 2008;Westefeld et al, 2006;Wilson et al, 2004). Nowcasts in general are user dependent (Baumgart et al, 2008).…”

Section: Thunderstormmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Warnings are provided for small areas (scale of the weather feature) in order to mitigate the "cry wolf" syndrome to be effective (Barnes et al, 2007;Hammer and Schmidlin, 2002). The critical issue is the capacity to provide the attention to the detail given the totality of the forecast responsibilities.…”

Section: Forecast Process and System Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automated Processing of Doppler Radar Data for Severe Weather Warnings

Joe¹,

Dance²,

Lakshmanan³

et al. 2012

Doppler Radar Observations - Weather Radar, Wind Profiler, Ionospheric Radar, and Other Advanced Applications

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“…Identification of the risk occurs when the public first becomes aware of the hazard through receipt of the warning or by seeing or hearing the threat. Many studies (e.g., Legates and Biddle 1999;Tiefenbacher et al 2001;Hammer and Schmidlin 2002;Brown et al 2002;Paul et al 2003;Mitchem 2003;Comstock and Mallonee 2005;Hayden et al 2007) note that the media and warning sirens are the most common dissemination methods used by the public to receive warnings. Sorensen (2000) found that the most rapid dissemination is through the use of reverse 911 telephone systems or tone-alert radios, both of which can alert about 90% of people within about 10 min, compared to 40% alerted by sirens and only 10% alerted by media in the same time frame.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship between Tornadic and Nontornadic Convective Wind Fatalities and Warnings

Black

Ashley

2011

Weather, Climate, and Society

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A database of tornado fatalities, nontornadic convective wind fatalities, severe thunderstorm warnings, and tornado warnings was compiled for the period 1986-2007 to assess the spatial and temporal distribution of warned and unwarned fatalities. The time of fatality and location as reported in Storm Data was compared to tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings to determine if a warning was in effect when the fatality occurred. Overall, 23.7% of tornado fatalities were unwarned, while 53.2% of nontornadic convective wind fatalities were unwarned. Most unwarned tornado fatalities occurred prior to the mid-1990s-coinciding with modernization of the National Weather Service-while unwarned nontornadic convective wind fatalities remained at a relatively elevated frequency throughout the study period. Geographic locations with high numbers of unwarned tornado and nontornadic convective wind fatalities were associated with one high-magnitude event that was unwarned rather than a series of smaller unwarned events over the period. There are many factors that contribute to warning response by the public, and the issuance of a severe thunderstorm or tornado warning is an important initial step in the warning process. A better understanding of the characteristics of warned and unwarned fatalities is important to future reduction of unwarned fatalities.

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Response to Warnings during the 3 May 1999 Oklahoma City Tornado: Reasons and Relative Injury Rates

Cited by 95 publications

References 7 publications

An exploratory study of the influence of severe weather radar broadcasts

An exploratory study of the influence of severe weather radar broadcasts

Automated Processing of Doppler Radar Data for Severe Weather Warnings

The Relationship between Tornadic and Nontornadic Convective Wind Fatalities and Warnings

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