"After mastering physics, meteorologists must now master psychology."
April 25, 2016 3:24 AM Subscribe
the problem is if the storm prediction center doesn't give us days of notice about possible severe weather, the weather channel will, in the most sensational way possible
especially if it's winter - OMG WINTERSTORM BALLBUSTER WILL HAVE 6-8 INCHES OF SNOW!!!!
posted by pyramid termite at 4:38 AM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]
especially if it's winter - OMG WINTERSTORM BALLBUSTER WILL HAVE 6-8 INCHES OF SNOW!!!!
posted by pyramid termite at 4:38 AM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]
Yeah those guys need to lay off the caffeine pills or amphetamines or whatever it is they're on. I was legit concerned for one of their reporters during Jonas because of how manic and erratic he was acting on the air.
posted by Jacqueline at 4:43 AM on April 25, 2016
posted by Jacqueline at 4:43 AM on April 25, 2016
the way you run for your life is, you leave the photos :)
posted by thelonius at 4:49 AM on April 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 4:49 AM on April 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
Or if you know you live in a tornado area you store them or copies in a safe location by default so you don't have to worry about them.
posted by srboisvert at 4:55 AM on April 25, 2016
posted by srboisvert at 4:55 AM on April 25, 2016
They're my mother-in-law's photos. All mine are in the cloud.
posted by Jacqueline at 4:57 AM on April 25, 2016
posted by Jacqueline at 4:57 AM on April 25, 2016
The funnel cloud?
posted by mmmbacon at 5:03 AM on April 25, 2016 [11 favorites]
posted by mmmbacon at 5:03 AM on April 25, 2016 [11 favorites]
The issue of too much warning is an interesting one.
I live in an area where tornados are common; one hit my town when I was a child, and took out a neighbourhood. The hospital in Joplin used to air TV ads on our local stations.
I have the feeling that the issues with too much warning could be mitigated if more people had access to shelter that they felt confident would protect them: underground shelters, tornado rooms, etc. If you don't feel safe where you are, you're more likely to want to risk fleeing.
Most people move into homes that are already built, and adding shelter costs a lot of money. Maybe you were lucky and rented/bought a home with a basement, but even that's not enough if it's a bad tornado that hits you.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:07 AM on April 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
I live in an area where tornados are common; one hit my town when I was a child, and took out a neighbourhood. The hospital in Joplin used to air TV ads on our local stations.
I have the feeling that the issues with too much warning could be mitigated if more people had access to shelter that they felt confident would protect them: underground shelters, tornado rooms, etc. If you don't feel safe where you are, you're more likely to want to risk fleeing.
Most people move into homes that are already built, and adding shelter costs a lot of money. Maybe you were lucky and rented/bought a home with a basement, but even that's not enough if it's a bad tornado that hits you.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:07 AM on April 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
I have the feeling that the issues with too much warning could be mitigated if more people had access to shelter that they felt confident would protect them: underground shelters, tornado rooms, etc. If you don't feel safe where you are, you're more likely to want to risk fleeing.
I grew up in Virginia, which is distinctly not tornado country. An odd one lands every now and then, but it's a curiosity, not a reminder of a constant threat. Then I moved to Joplin about sixteen years ago, and I still vividly remember my first tornado warning. I was in a second floor apartment in the middle of the afternoon, a vicious thunderstorm blowing through, which got stronger and stronger. Then the sirens went off, sirens I had only heard on television and in movies, and I started to feel panicked. I went from window to window trying to look out, but the wind blew so hard that the heavy rain obscured anything beyond a few inches beyond the pane. I vaguely knew something about seeking cover away from windows, but I felt horribly exposed as I listened to the weatherman talk about circulation and other factors on the television in the background.*
If I had had a tornado proof room to slip into, I would have felt so much more relieved and relaxed about the situation. Even now, I live in a ranch in Missouri, and I wish I had some kind of storm shelter.
*The apartment building I lived in then was reduced to rubble in the Joplin tornado a few years ago and some residents in the complex were killed.
posted by Atreides at 7:17 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
I grew up in Virginia, which is distinctly not tornado country. An odd one lands every now and then, but it's a curiosity, not a reminder of a constant threat. Then I moved to Joplin about sixteen years ago, and I still vividly remember my first tornado warning. I was in a second floor apartment in the middle of the afternoon, a vicious thunderstorm blowing through, which got stronger and stronger. Then the sirens went off, sirens I had only heard on television and in movies, and I started to feel panicked. I went from window to window trying to look out, but the wind blew so hard that the heavy rain obscured anything beyond a few inches beyond the pane. I vaguely knew something about seeking cover away from windows, but I felt horribly exposed as I listened to the weatherman talk about circulation and other factors on the television in the background.*
If I had had a tornado proof room to slip into, I would have felt so much more relieved and relaxed about the situation. Even now, I live in a ranch in Missouri, and I wish I had some kind of storm shelter.
*The apartment building I lived in then was reduced to rubble in the Joplin tornado a few years ago and some residents in the complex were killed.
posted by Atreides at 7:17 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
They are leaving out a few things on that super wide tornado. 4 of the people who died were storm chasers and not novice ones either. The storm behaved pretty strangely and people were safe one minute and not another. It also crossed two major highways, one of those being I 40 and was not only the widest tornado ever recorded but also an F5. What does widest ever mean? Over 2.5 miles wide at its peak with winds over 200 miles per hour. Yes some of the people who died were trying to flee. If i remember right, some tried to hide in a drainage ditch and were swept away by water, other died in their cars. Some also died in their houses. The statistic we don't have though is how many people stayed home that night because of the reports and survived because of it or how many people whose homes were destroyed survived because they were in a shelter because they were informed.
Warning systems have come a long way in my lifetime - not only do they have a good idea of a potential day for bad weather but they are accurate down to a few blocks when a tornado is tracking. What hasn't changed much - people still panic and do something they shouldn't. Or just flat out ignore warnings. I know i don't get too worked up if I am in town and just a few minutes from home. I am pushing 50 and have only seen 3 tornadoes in my lifetime in person and have only been to a shelter a half dozen times because it was threatening enough to do so. Yes tornadoes are not unusual this time of year, but lots of them don't hit the ground or a single home. The problem is less the pyschology of how soon to warn them and more how do we teach people to recognize the seriousness of a situation when it does go to the extreme.
i can live with the days out suggestions to be aware for tomorrow and i can live with the non stop coverage should something actually fire up Tuesday evening. I do long for a Gary England clone though - he kept his shit together when all hell broke loose. Some of these dudes get all yelly and too excited when it goes bad. One local weatherman took some heat during the aforementioned tornado because he was so worked up about it and actually gave the advice to flee south.
posted by domino at 7:21 AM on April 25, 2016 [6 favorites]
Warning systems have come a long way in my lifetime - not only do they have a good idea of a potential day for bad weather but they are accurate down to a few blocks when a tornado is tracking. What hasn't changed much - people still panic and do something they shouldn't. Or just flat out ignore warnings. I know i don't get too worked up if I am in town and just a few minutes from home. I am pushing 50 and have only seen 3 tornadoes in my lifetime in person and have only been to a shelter a half dozen times because it was threatening enough to do so. Yes tornadoes are not unusual this time of year, but lots of them don't hit the ground or a single home. The problem is less the pyschology of how soon to warn them and more how do we teach people to recognize the seriousness of a situation when it does go to the extreme.
i can live with the days out suggestions to be aware for tomorrow and i can live with the non stop coverage should something actually fire up Tuesday evening. I do long for a Gary England clone though - he kept his shit together when all hell broke loose. Some of these dudes get all yelly and too excited when it goes bad. One local weatherman took some heat during the aforementioned tornado because he was so worked up about it and actually gave the advice to flee south.
posted by domino at 7:21 AM on April 25, 2016 [6 favorites]
It's because people don't understand probability.
posted by benito.strauss at 8:05 AM on April 25, 2016
posted by benito.strauss at 8:05 AM on April 25, 2016
Said it before, will say it again; the whole warning/watch dichotomy is way too vague. Are they watching a storm that's happening or warning us that there might be a storm coming? For disastrous events that are (usually) rare, the warning needs to be really fucking clear, not something you have to try to remember (especially when you factor in ratings-driven hysterical weather channel people crying wolf all the damn time). My personal favorites are:
Storm's-a-Brewing
and
Storm's-a-Coming
posted by sexyrobot at 8:10 AM on April 25, 2016 [6 favorites]
Storm's-a-Brewing
and
Storm's-a-Coming
posted by sexyrobot at 8:10 AM on April 25, 2016 [6 favorites]
I agree that the tornado watch/warning dichotomy is far too confusing if you're not used to it on the regular. Also confusing is the NWS risk chart for severe weather which rates risk on a continuum of marginal -> slight -> enhanced -> moderate -> high. I HATE this chart because the words all mean the same thing to me. Marginal is less risk than slight? Moderate is more risk than enhanced? What the hell does any of that mean?
I live in Missouri where we are regularly under tornado watches throughout the summer. I was desensitized to this when I was a child, but after living on the east coast for a few years and then moving back here, I now have very high anxiety about thunderstorms. I can't sleep through them, not even the smaller ones. But I feel that the amount of information out there helps a lot. Gone are the days when I would just be glued to the local TV or radio for information. Now I follow NWS on social media so I get my head's up in advance. I have multiple weather apps on my phone which will send me updates. I can follow the storm cells in real time on my high-def radar apps. I still have regular weather radios in my home in case the rest of it fails me, too.
My in-laws in Tulsa put one of these in their garage floor, and I am glad they have it.
posted by aabbbiee at 8:45 AM on April 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
I live in Missouri where we are regularly under tornado watches throughout the summer. I was desensitized to this when I was a child, but after living on the east coast for a few years and then moving back here, I now have very high anxiety about thunderstorms. I can't sleep through them, not even the smaller ones. But I feel that the amount of information out there helps a lot. Gone are the days when I would just be glued to the local TV or radio for information. Now I follow NWS on social media so I get my head's up in advance. I have multiple weather apps on my phone which will send me updates. I can follow the storm cells in real time on my high-def radar apps. I still have regular weather radios in my home in case the rest of it fails me, too.
My in-laws in Tulsa put one of these in their garage floor, and I am glad they have it.
posted by aabbbiee at 8:45 AM on April 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
Warning systems have come a long way in my lifetime - not only do they have a good idea of a potential day for bad weather but they are accurate down to a few blocks when a tornado is tracking.
Meteorologist Paul Huttner made this exact point on his Jet Streaming (http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/podcasts/jet_streaming/) program a couple weeks back. Technology is to the point where meteorologists can estimate the track of a storm with a reasonable confidence level nearly an hour before a tornado has even been spotted. The public's sense of danger, though, is calibrated for when tornado warnings were issued at a county and your only sign of danger was minutes before a storm hit.
posted by nathan_teske at 9:02 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
Meteorologist Paul Huttner made this exact point on his Jet Streaming (http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/podcasts/jet_streaming/) program a couple weeks back. Technology is to the point where meteorologists can estimate the track of a storm with a reasonable confidence level nearly an hour before a tornado has even been spotted. The public's sense of danger, though, is calibrated for when tornado warnings were issued at a county and your only sign of danger was minutes before a storm hit.
posted by nathan_teske at 9:02 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
I agree that the tornado watch/warning dichotomy is far too confusing if you're not used to it on the regular.
Yeah, I have to agree. Growing up in tornado country, the difference between watch/warning was pretty stark and pretty clear. The only real issue is that warnings are generally issued by county, and a tornado warning in your county doesn't mean much to you if the tornadic storm is 40 miles away in a different part of your county.
I was home visiting family over Christmas break this year and was there for the December 26 tornado that ripped through the DFW area. I've been in California for over 15 years, so my tornado/severe storm calluses have long since worn off, and let me tell you that there is definitely a psychology component to experiencing timeline of 1) known threat of storms, 2) development of the storms, 3) tracking the development and movement of the storms, 4) experiencing the storm, and 5) experiencing the aftermath of the storm.
1) The known threat: They'd been saying for a few days that severe storms were possible on the 26th. Over the course of those few days, "possible" turned to "likely." That's a few days of anticipation, right there.
2) The storms develop: Over the course of the day, it got windier, and darker, and even without the meteorologists' help you could tell that the weather was unsettled, which made me unsettled.
3) Tracking the development of the storm: So yeah, by about 3:30 or 4:00, severe storms had developed, and they had developed enough that the ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates all pre-empted their broadcasts in favor of the anticipatory disaster fest. It's funny -- radar systems and computer modeling and stuff has developed so much since I last lived in tornado land, and the meteorologists can give a lot more real-time, concrete information now than they used to be able to. Which is great and all, but what occurred to me as we flipped through the stations is that, for all of their knowledge and all of the factual information they have at their fingertips, meteorologists aren't exactly reliable narrators. There's the ratings aspect of making sure that viewers land on your station, for one thing. But for another, the weather people get really, really excited about this stuff. It's their game day, and it doesn't happen all that often. So, when it does, they're hyped up, and a little tense, and it's hard as a viewer not to key into that and experience it either sympathetically or as first-hand anxiety. Psychology indeed.
On the 26th, the big storm, the one that ended up causing so much damage, first developed about an hour to the south of my folks' house. That's the storm that the news was tracking when they first came on-air. We watched it get bigger, watched the colors on the radar change from yellow to red to the alarming magenta that means Bad Shit Is Happening. And all this while the storm crept north and slightly to the east -- headed straight for us.
There were reports of damage in Hillsboro, then Maypearl. By the time it got to Maypearl, the meteorologists were emphatically telling viewers in the path of the storm to take shelter. The path of the storm could not have been a more direct, crow-flies line to where I was sitting with my family.
This went on for about an hour and 15 minutes. In those last 10-15, the weather guys were saying "People in [our town], the storm is headed straight for you. Take shelter NOW." And the funny thing was, as soon as they started saying that, the thunder started, and the wind strengthened. Creepy, scary -- psychology.
4) The storm: The wind was incredible, and the thunder and lightning were near constant. It was freaking scary. We did take shelter, my mom and I. We went to the one bathroom in the house that doesn't have an exterior wall. My brother and dad stayed in front of the TV, with my brother standing in front of the TV and confidently drawing a line on the radar with his finger, asserting that the storm was going to pass just to the east of us.
And it did. Just.
5) Aftermath: The first houses that the storm leveled were about three miles from us in a neighborhood where we have friends. (Who were okay.) The first death was about five miles from us. We knew all of this shortly after the storm moved away from us and towards them, because one of the news stations had its THUNDER TRUCK (I think? I might have the wrong name) chasing the storm, and they were filming and broadcasting the damage as it occurred.
That's a new element for me. They didn't do that when I was growing up. It comes with a real psychological twist, for sure. The storm we just lived through was tearing up houses and injuring -- killing -- people and you're watching it happen, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it except be grateful that it wasn't worse for you. We watched the whole thing. Heard the "unconfirmed reports" of this school being destroyed and four family members trapped in the rubble of a home in that city. Kept watching until the storm weakened and moved to the east. It almost felt like an obligation to stay with it to the end.
The thing about earthquakes in California is that they just happen. You don't sit in anticipation for 90 minutes knowing that it's coming. With that storm, which ended up killing 10 or 11 people, we watched it grow, and we watched it head straight for us, and the meteorologist predicted to the minute when it would hit us. That was information we had -- when the bad thing was going to happen. "How early is too early?" It's a loaded question. I could have done without that hour-plus of anxiety. Knowledge is power, I guess, but possessing that knowledge can also be a kind of torture.
posted by mudpuppie at 9:23 AM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]
Yeah, I have to agree. Growing up in tornado country, the difference between watch/warning was pretty stark and pretty clear. The only real issue is that warnings are generally issued by county, and a tornado warning in your county doesn't mean much to you if the tornadic storm is 40 miles away in a different part of your county.
I was home visiting family over Christmas break this year and was there for the December 26 tornado that ripped through the DFW area. I've been in California for over 15 years, so my tornado/severe storm calluses have long since worn off, and let me tell you that there is definitely a psychology component to experiencing timeline of 1) known threat of storms, 2) development of the storms, 3) tracking the development and movement of the storms, 4) experiencing the storm, and 5) experiencing the aftermath of the storm.
1) The known threat: They'd been saying for a few days that severe storms were possible on the 26th. Over the course of those few days, "possible" turned to "likely." That's a few days of anticipation, right there.
2) The storms develop: Over the course of the day, it got windier, and darker, and even without the meteorologists' help you could tell that the weather was unsettled, which made me unsettled.
3) Tracking the development of the storm: So yeah, by about 3:30 or 4:00, severe storms had developed, and they had developed enough that the ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates all pre-empted their broadcasts in favor of the anticipatory disaster fest. It's funny -- radar systems and computer modeling and stuff has developed so much since I last lived in tornado land, and the meteorologists can give a lot more real-time, concrete information now than they used to be able to. Which is great and all, but what occurred to me as we flipped through the stations is that, for all of their knowledge and all of the factual information they have at their fingertips, meteorologists aren't exactly reliable narrators. There's the ratings aspect of making sure that viewers land on your station, for one thing. But for another, the weather people get really, really excited about this stuff. It's their game day, and it doesn't happen all that often. So, when it does, they're hyped up, and a little tense, and it's hard as a viewer not to key into that and experience it either sympathetically or as first-hand anxiety. Psychology indeed.
On the 26th, the big storm, the one that ended up causing so much damage, first developed about an hour to the south of my folks' house. That's the storm that the news was tracking when they first came on-air. We watched it get bigger, watched the colors on the radar change from yellow to red to the alarming magenta that means Bad Shit Is Happening. And all this while the storm crept north and slightly to the east -- headed straight for us.
There were reports of damage in Hillsboro, then Maypearl. By the time it got to Maypearl, the meteorologists were emphatically telling viewers in the path of the storm to take shelter. The path of the storm could not have been a more direct, crow-flies line to where I was sitting with my family.
This went on for about an hour and 15 minutes. In those last 10-15, the weather guys were saying "People in [our town], the storm is headed straight for you. Take shelter NOW." And the funny thing was, as soon as they started saying that, the thunder started, and the wind strengthened. Creepy, scary -- psychology.
4) The storm: The wind was incredible, and the thunder and lightning were near constant. It was freaking scary. We did take shelter, my mom and I. We went to the one bathroom in the house that doesn't have an exterior wall. My brother and dad stayed in front of the TV, with my brother standing in front of the TV and confidently drawing a line on the radar with his finger, asserting that the storm was going to pass just to the east of us.
And it did. Just.
5) Aftermath: The first houses that the storm leveled were about three miles from us in a neighborhood where we have friends. (Who were okay.) The first death was about five miles from us. We knew all of this shortly after the storm moved away from us and towards them, because one of the news stations had its THUNDER TRUCK (I think? I might have the wrong name) chasing the storm, and they were filming and broadcasting the damage as it occurred.
That's a new element for me. They didn't do that when I was growing up. It comes with a real psychological twist, for sure. The storm we just lived through was tearing up houses and injuring -- killing -- people and you're watching it happen, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it except be grateful that it wasn't worse for you. We watched the whole thing. Heard the "unconfirmed reports" of this school being destroyed and four family members trapped in the rubble of a home in that city. Kept watching until the storm weakened and moved to the east. It almost felt like an obligation to stay with it to the end.
The thing about earthquakes in California is that they just happen. You don't sit in anticipation for 90 minutes knowing that it's coming. With that storm, which ended up killing 10 or 11 people, we watched it grow, and we watched it head straight for us, and the meteorologist predicted to the minute when it would hit us. That was information we had -- when the bad thing was going to happen. "How early is too early?" It's a loaded question. I could have done without that hour-plus of anxiety. Knowledge is power, I guess, but possessing that knowledge can also be a kind of torture.
posted by mudpuppie at 9:23 AM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]
I'm from Wisconsin and would very much appreciate the advance notice so I can better plan when to go outside and stare at the sky like an idiot.
posted by louche mustachio at 9:26 AM on April 25, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by louche mustachio at 9:26 AM on April 25, 2016 [7 favorites]
I need as much warning as I can get, having learned the hard way that being stuck in traffic during a warning is less than ideal and delays getting to your safe place, so you can stare at the sky like an idiot.
posted by Dr. Zira at 12:20 PM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Dr. Zira at 12:20 PM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
This is something that is hard to wrestle with, as everyone's threshold for how much warning they need is different. I remember speaking with some of the survivors from Greensburg, KS. They had been their shelter for over 20 minutes, and being used to warnings where nothing happened, were about ready to get out of the shelter when the tornado hit. Meanwhile, I worked in a Nebraska nursing home for a few years at the end of high school, and we needed lots of warning to get the residents down into the basement. Trying to find a one sized fits all policy for a government organization like the National Weather Service can use is difficult if not impossible.
posted by weathergal at 2:50 PM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by weathergal at 2:50 PM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]
I could have done without that hour-plus of anxiety.
It may have been an hour plus of warning for you but there were a bunch of little towns on the way to Garland. Those people need to know too. Not to mention weathergals' point that hospitals/nursing homes/schools/any other large gathering of people probably need a good bit of advanced notice too.
posted by LizBoBiz at 4:17 PM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
It may have been an hour plus of warning for you but there were a bunch of little towns on the way to Garland. Those people need to know too. Not to mention weathergals' point that hospitals/nursing homes/schools/any other large gathering of people probably need a good bit of advanced notice too.
posted by LizBoBiz at 4:17 PM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
I just moved to Edmond, OK (directly north of Oklahoma City) after living in places where tornadoes were rare. Luckily my office building at the local university has an underground storm shelter, so I'll chill there. Between this and the earthquakes it's been an interesting transition...
posted by dhens at 6:37 PM on April 25, 2016
posted by dhens at 6:37 PM on April 25, 2016
We should totally have an Oklahoma meetup tomorrow between 3 and 9 pm in a storm shelter.
posted by Dr. Zira at 6:52 PM on April 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by Dr. Zira at 6:52 PM on April 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
This is Oklahoma's version of a snow day. I just read that a few school districts have closed for today due to the severe weather risk, including one pretty large one. Another is closing early. Happened last year too in response to the tornado a couple years ago that hit two elementary schools, killing several students at one of them. Talk about something that will get people making questionable decisions - being separated from their kids with a huge storm coming.
I think I'll have to skip the storm shelter meet up. I'll stay out here where it probably won't even rain.
posted by domino at 6:22 AM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think I'll have to skip the storm shelter meet up. I'll stay out here where it probably won't even rain.
posted by domino at 6:22 AM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
Heh, one of the few things I miss about Tulsa is the thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are a thing that happens in South Florida, but there usually isn't as much lightning as you get up on the plains, or even around Orlando.
As I've mentioned before, tornadoes don't scare me since they are very localized and it is reasonably easy to see whether a given one is going to threaten your particular location. Just keep an eye on the radar and you're good. Plus the damage is localized enough that resource distribution isn't a problem in the aftermath. It isn't at all like the situation after a major hurricane or earthquake or what have you. It seems a lot more manageable when you can walk out of the zone of devastation of even the largest and most violent tornado within an hour or two.
In my decade in Tulsa I only had to take shelter three times, all of which ended up not being actual tornadoes. I was under tornado warnings at least 20 or 30 times that number, but as has been said before, you can track these things closely enough that you don't necessarily need to shelter for every warning.
BTW, tornado warnings haven't been county based for at least 5 years, probably longer. A lot of media outlets still highlight entire counties, but the actual warning is for a specific, usually truncated cone shaped, polygon that may or may not be confined to a particular county. Pretty sure they do that for severe thunderstorm warnings, as well.
posted by wierdo at 4:57 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
As I've mentioned before, tornadoes don't scare me since they are very localized and it is reasonably easy to see whether a given one is going to threaten your particular location. Just keep an eye on the radar and you're good. Plus the damage is localized enough that resource distribution isn't a problem in the aftermath. It isn't at all like the situation after a major hurricane or earthquake or what have you. It seems a lot more manageable when you can walk out of the zone of devastation of even the largest and most violent tornado within an hour or two.
In my decade in Tulsa I only had to take shelter three times, all of which ended up not being actual tornadoes. I was under tornado warnings at least 20 or 30 times that number, but as has been said before, you can track these things closely enough that you don't necessarily need to shelter for every warning.
BTW, tornado warnings haven't been county based for at least 5 years, probably longer. A lot of media outlets still highlight entire counties, but the actual warning is for a specific, usually truncated cone shaped, polygon that may or may not be confined to a particular county. Pretty sure they do that for severe thunderstorm warnings, as well.
posted by wierdo at 4:57 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
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It was the first time I'd seen a tornado watch turn into a tornado warning for my zipcode (they're relatively rare here) and it took a lot longer than I would have anticipated to get all the pets, everyone's meds, the photographs, etc. down to the basement. Having a few days' notice that it was a possibility would have let us get better organized.
But it looks like too much notice is counterproductive for most people? Will they start withholding information until the "optimal" time to save more lives?
I don't know how I feel about those decisions being made for me.
posted by Jacqueline at 3:37 AM on April 25, 2016