New Tornado Warning Wording

UNSURVIVABLE, CATASTROPHIC, COMPLETE DEVASTATION. These are just some of the new words that will be added to future Tornado Warnings to add emphasis to the possible dangers. At the beginning of the month five weather service offices located in Kansas and Missouri will use a new kind of warning wording that's based on the severity of a storm's expected impact. They claim that the goal is to be able to more effectively communicate the risks people about to face with an impending storm in their area.

"We'd like to think that as soon as we say there is a tornado warning, everyone would run to the basement," said Ken Harding, a weather service official in Kansas City. "That's not how it is. They will channel flip, look out the window or call neighbors. A lot of times people don't react until they see it."

The new wording will be tested using two tiers of warnings for thunderstorms and three tiers for tornadoes, each based on severity. After the testing period is over, a research team in North Carolina will analyze the results, and help the weather service decide whether to expand the new warnings to other parts of the country.

"We have found in Mississippi and Alabama and various other Southern states that people feel they would constantly be going to a shelter if they heeded every tornado warning," Laura Myer, a social science research professor at Mississippi State University, explains. "For people in mobile homes, that's the craziest thing. To get to a shelter, they have to leave home. They feel like if they left during every watch or warning, they would be on the road all the time."

Andy Bailey, a meteorologist with the NWS office in Missouri, said it might look something like this: "THIS IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TORNADO WITH COMPLETE DEVASTATION LIKELY. ... SEEK SHELTER NOW! ... MOBILE HOMES AND OUTBUILDINGS WILL OFFER NO SHELTER FROM THIS TORNADO — ABANDON THEM IMMEDIATELY."

The reason for the weather service's written bulletins is to target the primary audience-broadcasters who issue warnings on the air along with emergency managers that activate weather sirens. They are hoping that the new wording would give folks who would be in a tornado event like Joplin, Missouri, an urgency that's hard to ignore.

"After hundreds of times of similar thunderstorms approaching Joplin, many of those with tornado warnings attached, and you see them pass ... after all those storms, you kind of get jaundiced about the warnings and tend not to give them the weight you probably should give them," said Jeff Lehr, a reporter at The Joplin Globe, and long-time Joplin resident.

Sources: Yahoo News, Associated Press, NWS