How ‘Crying Wolf’ in Bad Weather Warnings Erodes Public Compliance

January 28, 2015

  • January 28, 2015 at 1:31 pm
    Mickey Dee says:
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    The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Everybody run! There’s a 68% chance the sky is falling!
    I just yelled this in my office. No one ran. I think that chicken ruined it for us all. If the sky falls and we’re not prepared, blame the chicken.

  • January 28, 2015 at 1:56 pm
    Dave says:
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    This is exactly why people have parties in the middle of hurricanes. They’ve heard it all before, the storm never seems to be as bad as predicted and most of the time their belief that things won’t be so bad is proven out. So when the prediction is accurate, people will ignore it and people will die. Sad :(

    • February 2, 2015 at 5:59 pm
      Agent says:
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      Dave, I saw where DeBlasio, the Commie said he wouldn’t be closing the subways when the next storm hits NY. He caught some “heat” for closing them last time and the storm was minimal in NY. Those public sector employees just loved having another paid day off.

  • January 28, 2015 at 2:05 pm
    Texas Agent says:
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    Living on the Texas Gulf Coast, we have a lot of false alarms during hurricane season. It does make people ignore the warnings, often up until the hurricane is actually here. The fiasco of trying to evacuate Houston when Hurricane Rita was on the way only compounded the problem. Rita went east and didn’t hurt us at all, so the next time warnings were issued, a lot of people ignored them.

    • January 28, 2015 at 3:07 pm
      Agent says:
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      The people in New Orleans were victimized when Katrina hit because the corrupt mayor Nagin refused to evacuate them even though he had about 100 buses to use. People were wading around in the streets and a lot of looting was going on. The people paid no attention to the approaching storm and the government didn’t either. Then, FEMA came out and handed them $2,000 checks for living expenses. How great is that?

  • January 28, 2015 at 2:39 pm
    Dan Danson says:
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    If weathermen were permitted to give probability-based forecasts, everyone would be better off. I would much rather hear something like “20% chance of more than 18 inches, 40% 10-18 inches, and 40% less than 10 inches.”

    Instead, we get both type 1 and type 2 errors, and politicians and weathermen get roasted when they predict worse.

    Of course, in Italy, they are criminalyl charged when they underpredict.

    But the general public is assumed to be too stupid to udnerstand probabilites, and so we will never see this.

    • January 28, 2015 at 3:29 pm
      Agent says:
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      Weathermen have about the only job in America where they can be wrong 60% of the time and still keep their job. They grin at the camera and give excuses why the weather didn’t come in as they predicted. All that technology from Satellites,pressure measurements and they still miss a lot.

      • January 28, 2015 at 3:36 pm
        Rosenblatt says:
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        Don’t forget baseball players – they can fail 70% of the time (.300 batting average) and get a raise!

        • January 30, 2015 at 5:09 pm
          Agent says:
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          Now you can apologize to me Rosenblatt for insulting me about saying the NFL will be in charge of the footballs for the Superbowl. It is now confirmed that they will have officials handling, inspecting the footballs until kickoff. So what if the ball boys are throwing them in and out of the game. Goodell is worthless by the way. His press conference was a joke and he is still investigating Deflategate. He just doesn’t want to upset anyone until after the game because there is so much money on the line and try to downplay the investigation. My guess is the pre-game hoopla will still focus on this incident.

          • January 31, 2015 at 8:25 pm
            Rosenblatt says:
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            I agree Agent, Goodell is an inept, insincere and horrible commissioner – well, unless you’re one of the team owners who are making billions in the league right now. As for your apology – since I didn’t insult you, there will be no apology.

          • February 2, 2015 at 2:30 pm
            Agent says:
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            Spoken like a true liberal Rosenblatt who never seems to recognize when they insult a Conservative. Ron leads the league in that department. Libby makes no bones about insults and revels in them. Back when you were the monitor, there were so many you couldn’t dock her enough.

          • February 9, 2015 at 3:24 pm
            Libby says:
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            Agent – you’re so deserving of the insults there is no way I will apologize. Especially when I get them right back from you.

        • February 5, 2015 at 8:17 am
          Rosenblatt says:
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          Still waiting for you to show me exactly what I said that you think was an insult to you. Why would I apologize if I didn’t insult you and you can’t post what I said that you thought was an insult?

  • January 28, 2015 at 2:44 pm
    philip says:
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    The Gov,Mayor,Police Chief tell me to stay inside. OK… but I’m not believing it until I see one of those CNN reporters (who should be staying inside to)get blown off their feet telling me how bad it is outside!

  • January 28, 2015 at 2:55 pm
    uct says:
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    We get tornado warnings pretty frequently where I am in Missouri. In the last 5 years, we’ve had (in my estimation), nearly 30 tornado warnings, complete with blaring sirens and scrolling news updates on tv. Out of those warnings, we’ve had one tornado within 15 miles of my house. One. Is is any wonder people ignore the siren?

    You want to see something funny? When the sirens start blaring, walk outside. Most of my neighborhood is standing outside looking up at the sky. It’s almost comical. The Weather people have lost all respect here. They try to make it sound like death is coming so people will tune in and watch. If they were correct even 1/4 of the time, I could understand. Here, they aren’t.

    • January 28, 2015 at 3:08 pm
      Agent says:
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      Were the sirens blaring when Joplin was hit?

    • January 28, 2015 at 4:11 pm
      Perplexed says:
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      We moved to Wichita Falls 2 years after their worst tornadoe. I enjoyed storms before we moved there and was one of those that stood outside watching. My co-workers ran for cover when the sirens blew and some would get quite emotional. My neighbor would scale our fence and beat on our door to wake us in the middle of the night to take cover in his storm shelter, which was fully furnished. He would settle in and start drinking beer until it was all over. He lost two houses in his lifetime to tornadoes, so it was understandable. It was sad to watch and you wouldn’t think of making fun of people who had lost loved ones or all their material possessions. Sobered me up quick.

      • January 30, 2015 at 5:13 pm
        Agent says:
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        Perplexed, my old neighborhood in Oklahoma was taken out about 10 years after we moved. Okla City has had a lot of it and the recent Moore, Ok was a bad one. My son in law, his friends drove up there after it happened, helped clean debris, feed the workers etc. I admire him a lot for his altruism.

    • January 30, 2015 at 2:57 pm
      ExciteBiker says:
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      UCT, technology in recent years has enabled tornado warnings to become a lot more specific. In Texas we now get neighborhood-specific warnings. Improving the specificity of warnings in this way should hopefully result in people taking them very seriously. “There’s a tornado on the ground in your specific ZIP code” is a much better warning than “there’s a tornado on the ground in your county.”

      • February 9, 2015 at 3:44 pm
        Libby says:
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        ExciteBiker – I can’t believe you are from Texas. You’re so level headed and normal.

  • January 30, 2015 at 3:11 pm
    ExciteBiker says:
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    ““lack of trust in the warning” also may limit the public’s willingness to comply with orders.”

    This is exactly why the Talk Radio (and presumably Fox News) response was so infurating and dangerous. Airheads like Limbaugh dedicated their entire shows to the notion that the National Weather Service is politicized, that the blizzard warning was politically-motivated, and that scientists are inherently untrustworthy because they are all either overtly or secretly working to advance a ‘liberal agenda.’

    The message was, point blank, don’t trust these storm warnings, don’t trust the weather, because these are all coming from political operatives.

    Of course, the opportunity was taken to conflate weather with climate: erroneous weather forecasts were used as proof that climate science isn’t a legitimate field of study.

    • February 2, 2015 at 2:33 pm
      Agent says:
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      Proof that Global Warming is here to stay. Chicago has 19″ on the ground and another wave in New England. We are on pace to have another hottest year on record.

      • February 9, 2015 at 3:46 pm
        Libby says:
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        Agent – I expected another ignorant comment from you about climate change since you don’t know the difference between weather and climate. Did you even get as far as the 4th grade???



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