{"id":3256,"date":"2012-05-17T09:16:44","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T14:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/citings\/?p=3256"},"modified":"2012-05-17T09:16:44","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T14:16:44","slug":"warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2012\/05\/17\/warning\/","title":{"rendered":"Warning!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tornado<\/a>
\n<\/small>
\n<\/small><\/p>\n

Though I am more than happy to trade in my blue jeans and boots for shorts and flip-flops, not everything warm weather brings is welcome.\u00a0 As the Bemidji Pioneer<\/a><\/em>\u00a0reminds us, warm weather also brings tornado season.<\/p>\n

For years, weather experts have been working on cutting-edge technology to detect tornados.\u00a0 But, when city sirens wail and weather warnings flash across the bottom of t.v. screens, people are generally slow to take cover.\u00a0\u00a0 In fact, many studies have shown that people often spend time looking for more information about the potential tornado rather than hitting their basements. \u00a0According to Dennis Mileti, a sociologist and retired director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder,<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople turn into information vampires when they hear their town and village might be struck by a violent tornado…And if you don\u2019t provide them with the information they need, what you\u2019re actually doing is guaranteeing the time people spend searching is longer rather than shorter.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In addition, many people get into the mindset that the warning is \u201cjust another warning.\u201d\u00a0 Tornado survivors are an exception, though, as they almost always respond more quickly to severe weather warnings.\u00a0 But, as Mississippi State University Sociologist Laura Myers explains, the rest of us don\u2019t learn from their experience.<\/p>\n

Myers found that about 10 percent of the population are anxious about bad weather and take shelter at the first sign of danger. But, most respond to dangerous situations like a tornado warning with what she calls denial. \u201cThey\u2019re sitting there saying, \u2018OK, I don\u2019t want to deal with it. I don\u2019t want to have to worry about it. I want to assume everything is going to be OK.\u2019 That\u2019s why the person will wait for that secondary confirmation. They\u2019ll say, \u2018I\u2019ve really gotta know it\u2019s going to hit me.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Related, many don’t respond due to the prevalence of false alarms.\u00a0 According to the National Weather Service, three out of four tornado warnings are false alarms.\u00a0 Social scientists believe that just explaining that these were<\/em> false alarms (for example, that a tornado formed but didn\u2019t touch down) would help; otherwise, people often think they are just mistakes.<\/p>\n

Because of this, the weather service is making an effort to utilize the knowledge of social scientists in order to understand the impact of warning systems. \u00a0This blending of physical and social science, combined with new technology and social media outlets, will change how tornado warnings reach us and, hopefully, save lives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though I am more than happy to trade in my blue jeans and boots for shorts and flip-flops, not everything warm weather brings is welcome.\u00a0 As the Bemidji Pioneer\u00a0reminds us, warm weather also brings tornado season. For years, weather experts have been working on cutting-edge technology to detect tornados.\u00a0 But, when city sirens wail and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[126,17203],"class_list":["post-3256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-disaster","tag-hazards"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3256"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3267,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256\/revisions\/3267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}