Understanding Tornado Warnings, False Alarms, and Complacency

This infographic fact-sheet is a summation of the results of 77 interviews across 10 focus groups in three US cities, which were conducted as part of the Understanding Tornado Warnings, False Alarms, and Complacency, and Proposing Theory-Directed Solutions for Effective Warnings project. This project attempts to better understand complacency and false alarms during the threat of tornadoes. Public risk increases as individuals become more complacent to tornado alerts, which is a suspected outcome of false alarms. However, timing of tornadic events, repeated exposure to alerts, and difficulty to predict weather phenomena create a complex set of challenges with regards to effectively alerting at-risk communities.​