Severe-Weather Phobia

Abstract

n a 1996 paper in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, our lead author introduced "severeweather phobia" as a term, defining this condition as "an intense, debilitating, unreasonable fear of severe weather." The term "severe weather" was defined as severe thunderstorms or tornadoes. The exploratory study in 1996 of severe-weather phobia based its findings on interviews with 81 people who described themselves as severe-weather phobics. Sixty-five of the 81 subjects (80%) indicated that the onset of their phobia occurred as a result of a previous encounter with a severe storm (using the National Weather Service definition: winds at 58 mph or greater, or 0.75-inch or larger hail, or tornadoes). Phobics monitored the weather radio almost constantly and had anxiety even if the threat of severe weather was five days away or more; and they often thought about being injured or dying. The anxiety ceased as soon as the threat of severe weather was over. The subjects were embarrassed or very embarrassed about their phobia and were surprised to learn that others might also have the phobia. However, very few subjects had sought treatment of any kind. It is important to emphasize that these phobics were very afraid of severe weather. Many of them described themselves as barely able or unable to function prior to and during severe-weather events. Subjects described moving to other parts of the country and not picking up their children at school as two

Do Weather-Induced Moods Affect the Processing of Earnings News?

“…For example, “severe weather phobia” (Watt and Difrancescantonio [], Westefeld et al. []) can have a significant impact on behaviors but falls beyond the construct of “negative mood” that is the focus of our study. We are unaware of prior findings that generic “stormy” weather below the “severe” threshold causes emotional effects that might fall beyond the construct of “negative mood”; however, for completeness, section provides robustness tests controlling for rainfall that likely correlates with stormy conditions.…”

Weather on the Brain I: A Theoretical View on Needs to Think About Weather

“…Fear of storms, anecdotally the most common meteorological phobia (and see e.g., Coleman et al, 2014;Watt & DiFrancescantonio, 2012;Westefeld, 1996;Westefeld et al, 2006 for empirical evidence), falls under the natural environment phobia classification in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5 th Edition, alongside the fears of water and heights (American Psychiatric Association; APA, 2013). While storm phobias alone have the lowest prevalence rates of the natural environment specific phobias (roughly 2-3% of the American population; LeBeau, 2010), the combined trio of natural environment NEED FOR COGNITION ABOUT WEATHER 7 phobias has the highest subtype prevalence rate of the specific phobias (ranging from 8.9-11.6% of the American population; APA, 2013;LeBeau, 2010).…”

“…Storm phobias appear to occur most often for children and adolescents and, in terms of available data on gender differences in presentation, women tend to most often express natural environment-type phobias (Coelho et al, 2020;Wardenaar et al, 2017;Ollendick & King, 1991; also see Dollinger, 1992a, 1992b). If anything, storm phobias appear underreported in an "official" sense, based on the fieldwork of Westefeld et al (2006) and Coleman et al (2014; also see Watt & DiFrancescantonio, 2012).…”

Automated Processing of Doppler Radar Data for Severe Weather Warnings

“…This has a significant impact on statistics but also on the "cry wolf" syndrome (AMS, 2001;Barnes et al, 2007;Schumacher et al, 2010;Westefeld et al, 2006). An accurate but useless tornado forecast could be by stating that "next year there will be a tornado in the U.S." This statement is a climatological or statistical forecast.…”

“…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).…”