FloydFreak's Blog

The recent tornadoes in north central Florida were horrible. The scars from these storms are painful and will take years to heal. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. Weather radios are being advocated as a means to prevent the great loss of life that was experienced with this tornadic event. While radios will certainly help, in my opinion, there is a tremendous amount of complacency regarding tornadoes. This, I believe is a fundamental problem that needs to be addressed. Complacency reduction in conjunction with encouragement of residents to purchase radios will help to reduce death tolls in the future.

Allow me to illustrate:

1) How many times have we heard tornado warnings for a “Doppler-indicated” tornado during summertime thunderstorms? The radar has indicated possible rotation and the National Weather Service issues a tornado warning. The residents walk outside, see a great deal of lightning and heavy rain, they see no tornado and they go about their business with no harm done. This is problem #1.

2) The manner in which warnings are issued is also problematic. They are typically issued by county. This can be a problem in large counties. For instance, assume that a tornado is spotted in Davenport which is in extreme northeast Polk County. A warning is issued for Polk County. However, the residents of Bradley Junction in southwestern Polk may very well have sunny skies. This further exacerbates the aforementioned complacency and constitutes problem #2.

In other words, the public needs to be educated – they need to learn to take ANY tornado warning seriously. In the meantime, perhaps there is some way to make warnings more geographically specific. Until such time as warning improvements can be made, we must take this threat seriously each and every time a tornado warning is issued.

And get out and buy a radio - I know that I am go to do so!