The key is to elicit an emotional response from the audience. How we use language and phrase our sentences during the forecast is a crucial part of the jobs for those who work in broadcast meteorology. It isn’t enough to forecast a model. People need to be able to receive a message and understand how the weather in their area will impact their lives.

The National Weather Service (NWS) communicates threats to partners and constituents via a product called the impact-based warning. The goal of this process is to focus on providing more information to media and emergency managers, facilitating improved public response and decision making; and meeting societal needs in the most life-threatening weather events. The impact-based warning will have “event tags” at the bottom of each severe thunderstorm and tornado warning. The additional tornado event tags will have tornado threat information attached to them as a quick means to provide users and partners with potential high impact signals that prompt faster risk assessment and protective action.

We have all seen the memes, heard the jokes, or perhaps experienced this ourselves. You know what I’m talking about. As soon as folks in tornado zones are warned about a tornado in the area, rather than seek shelter some will go outside and watch the storm roll in. If you have experienced the moments prior to a tornado event then you can relate to the buzz in the air that forms from the intense energy exchange in the atmosphere. Back in the spring of 2011, the residents of Joplin, Missouri experienced more than a buzz or whisper of a storm. Those who lived, stood by as a devastating, deadly tornado wreaked havoc on the infrastructure and sense of well-being of the community.

What does this have to do with social science? Well after the storm, NWS conducted surveys and focus groups with folks in the area to understand how residents respond to tornado watches and warnings. The residents of Joplin said that another warning product wasn’t going to be helpful. What they wanted to know is how this warning is different from the previous warnings of the season. If you live or have lived in an area prone to these types of storms, then you are aware that one can easily lose track of how many warnings are forecasted during a season, and that prior to this study, the warning system for the run of the mill tornado was the same for a tornado that will ravage all in its path.

So the problem became, how can meteorologists communicate to their audience that the 61st tornado warning is going to be much different than the 60th tornado warning. In the case of Joplin, what residents really needed to know was the difference between a tornado warning, and what we in the field refer to as a Tornado Warning.

The key is to elicit an emotional response from the audience. How we use language and phrase our sentences during the forecast is a crucial part of the jobs for those who work in broadcast meteorology. It isn’t enough to forecast a model. People need to be able to receive a message and understand how the weather in their area will impact their lives.

What the NWS learned is how important it is for broadcast meteorologists to paint a picture of the potential outcome, or describe a cautionary tale. “If this is going to happen, this is what your neighborhood will look like.” To assist in this depiction, the NWS implemented a number of different descriptors, or tags, to describe the storm’s activity: Tornado, Tornado Possible and Tornado Damage Threat. Since this implementation, you can see other organizations using these tags as well. Researchers also took a look at storm data metrics from 1950-2010 and were able to publish information on the risks of being in an EF2 storm verses an EF3 storm. These are great indicators of risk because as the folks in Joplin will tell you, not all tornados are the same.

This project is really a success because this social science study sparked new research in the physical science fields. In trying to disprove this “soft science” approach, scientists discovered connections between wind speed and how much altitude unsecured objects are able to achieve.

A lesson in this story is even if and when people tell you science isn’t done that way, just nod your head and continue trying new things! The absolute worst thing that can happen is you said you tried. The best case scenario, which is what happened in the aftermath of the Joplin tornado, is that a new way of conducting science leads to innovative strategies and more effective communication!