Tornado warning dissemination and response at a university campus

Abstract

An online survey was completed by 2,921 students and employees at a large university following a tornado near-miss that required taking shelter. During this event, the university's emergency alert messaging system was tested. The first alert message was received by over 66% of the sample within 15 min, and cell phones were the most common means of receiving this message-especially for students. Employees relied more on computer instant messaging than did students. Interpersonal communication was also important. The majority could correctly define tornado watch, tornado warning and shelter in place. Age and frequency of use of weather information were of mixed significance as predictors. Finally, over three quarters of respondents reported taking shelter during the event. Being female and being an employee made a respondent more likely to take shelter.

Climate extremes in the United States: recent research by physical geographers

“…When identifying improvement opportunities for future warning dissemination and risk communication, some researchers have underscored the importance of coupling advances in technology with an understanding of human sociology and psychology vis-à-vis tornado events (Ashley, 2007;League et al, 2010). To illustrate, efforts to Physical Geography adopt fine-grained data to reduce uncertainty (League et al, 2010) or a new model to give forecasters credit for close calls to increase warning credibility should parallel efforts to educate the public about tornado path directions or the dangers of using highway overpasses as shelter (Schmidlin et al, 2009;Sherman-Morris, 2010;Suckling & Ashley, 2006).…”

GIS-based modeling of tornado siren sound propagation: Refining spatial extent and coverage estimations

“…Additionally, severe weather occurrences are incredibly expensive; on average, tornado damage is projected to cost as much as $982 million annually (Changnon, 2009). Due to the regularity of severe weather events, considerable infrastructure is in place to study the dynamics of severe weather in order to continually improve forecasting measures (Bieringer and Ray, 1996;Doswell, 2003;Brotzge and Erickson, 2009) and produce timely and effective alerts for citizens (Hammer and Schmidlin, 2002;Sherman-Morris, 2010). Such efforts are imperative in reducing the number of injuries and fatalities caused by severe storms (Balluz et al, 2000).…”

“…Severe weather notices (e.g., severe thunderstorm watch, tornado warning) issued by the National Weather Service (NWS) are disseminated to those in danger through a variety of means including outdoor warning sirens, television (see Comstock and Mallonee, 2005) and radio broadcasts (including NOAA weather radio), smartphone/tablet and desktop computer-based weather applications, social media outlets (Blanford et al, 2014;Chatfield and Brajawidagda, 2014), and/or word of mouth (e.g., friends, family, neighbors) (see Hammer and Schmidlin, 2002;Sherman-Morris, 2010). However, as Mathews and Ellis (2016) note, most of these dissemination methods are voluntary and require citizens to take the initiative to purchase and use particular technologies (i.e.…”

“…Regardless of these issues, when a portion of the population is not able to hear the sirens (e.g., Paul et al, 2003;Sherman-Morris, 2010) it is extremely problematic and worrisome for government officials managing siren infrastructure. Inability to receive siren warnings can be caused by poor placement of infrastructure and/or an insufficient number of sirens to provide ample sound coverage (Zunkel, 2015).…”

Potential Tornado Warning Improvement Resulting from Utilization of the TDS in the Warning Decision Process

“…Because many people need additional confirmatory information prior to acting on a tornado warning (e.g., Mileti and Sorenson 1990;Chaney and Weaver 2008;Sherman-Morris 2010;Jauernic and Van Den Broeke 2016), noting a confirmed tornado in warning text may encourage appropriate safety actions.…”