Severe Year!

We are out here putting ourselves in danger alerting people about the dangers of these storms and I do not know what is going on. Are people just not listening to the reports? I seen an interview in the midwest (I don't know where I seen it) but, people say that they ignore it because it is so common to hear the sirens in the county they are in. They were saying that when the county alerts the sirens that the whole county will be warned and that the storm would just hit part of the county and not effect the rest of it. We have to push for these warning sirens to be able to sound 1 or 2 or 3 or a group of these sirens that are in the effected area so people will listen to them instead of ignoring these life saving devices.

Although I agree with your siren/part of county policy...

It most likely does more good to promote NOAA Weather Radios. As has been discussed numerous times on every weather board from here to Zimbabwe, the sirens are OUTDOOR warning sirens. Unless you happen to live a block from it, in this day and age of air conditioning running and better constructed houses (less outside sound gets in), you won't hear the sirens anyway.

The "human response" element is what we try to help here at SS. When I get on TV and can say "there's a tornado ON THE GROUND", people pay attention more than just saying there's a warning. Add to that LIVE VIDEO of said tornado, and people hit the basement (hopefully).

I know that I have been guilty of ignoring warnings about the weather. It almost cost my family their lives in May 2007. We woke to our house flooded with more water coming in. This was 3 days after Greensburg.

People need to take the weather more seriously. Maybe if the weather forcasters were to be more of alarmist, maybe more people would listen.

I want to thank the chasers for their help in alerting the public. Without you, even more would die.

My take on it is that the average person,does not take weather situations serious,i have seen it all the time,most people will drive across a flooded road or ignore a warning siren because they think it won't hit them,some people hear tornado warning sirens and 9 out of 10 times the storm just passes by,so then they just almost start to ignore it,and then that 1 out of 10 hits them,i think a lot of it has to do with no respect for mother nature and she wins when it comes down to it,i mean how many times have the people on the weather channel said turn around don't drown,but does it sink in to people?That's my take.--------Brian

I agree with the NOAA Radios comment. We as a family have 2 NOAA Radios in our house, I have 1 in our garage. I would also like to say that I use a alert system for our cell phones http://www.emergencyemail.org/ you can chose what type of alerts you want. This is a great system for people on the move like most of us are these days. This system could be more advanced but we make do with what we have and comment on what we would like to see and be notified about and hopefully programmers will add these things we want.

I have a NOAA radio and frequent sites online to follow weather. I come from VA, so I mostly used to follow the hurricanes back east and have always been a bit of a weather bug. Here in the midwest the storms petrify me and the locals just shrug them off. I think they just get used to it and don't take it seriously. The Picher OK tornado came within a mile and half of where I am and I am honestly horrified with the danger the midwesterners live with every day.

I am thankful to all of the spotters out there.

I agree with all of you. I live in Louisiana (Baton Rouge). We don't have basements, etc so all we have is "an interior room". Too many people are too complacent. Why isn't this sort of safety taught in schools. When my daughter was young, and in Montessori School, they had storm drills regularly. With a bunch of little kids to be responsible for, it could be a nightmare. It came in handy on several occasions, during severe weather that struck very close to the school. The kids stayed pretty calm and the teachers could stay in control of the situation.

In my family, since I can remember, we were taught to 1)get dressed, 2)put your shoes on to prepare yourself in case you had to get away in a hurry, or be out over ground with debris on it, and 3)take cover in our hallway (which is all we had). We didn't have weather radios then. Today, we all call each other, even if it is in the middle of the night to help be prepared. It is sort of a family joke...with the shoes and all...but we DO take it seriously.

Why don't the weather casters give these suggestions (for clothes, shoes, etc)? I should be common sense.

I just discovered this site from a reference on WeatherUnderground.com. Thanks for all your hard work!!! Keep it up!

Aside from the extremely active year, and this is pure speculation: Could the fact that so many people are online and/or wireless as compared to 10 or even 5 years ago have anything to do with the increased number of injuries and death? The primary form of household entertainment pre-internet was TV, which is an excellent warning conduit, but that's no longer the case. If someone is surfing the net or doodling with their wireless phone they aren't going to get those warnings. Maybe someday emergency type warnings can be "broadcast" to those users, but it would probably get marked as spam.

Related side-note: It's disturbing to see TV stations apologizing profusely for breaking into coverage during a life-threatening event!

Since I work online I just always check the noaa weather radar daily, and again if it looks at all stormy, and then the spottersnetwork lets me know more precisely what's going on where. So, rather than worrying about radio, which I don't listen to, or sirens, which we can't hear out here in the country, we just keep ourselves informed.

Thanks all!

Just last Sunday while I was at work a tornado warning went into effect (Jasper Co. Iowa). Sirens sounded, etc. Our policy is to stop what we're doing, alert customers and all go to our safe place in the store until we get the all clear. The managers man the front doors (which I think is a bit insane considering all the glass). During the warning, a couple came to shop. Our manager informed them of the warning (they had to hear the sirens) and where to go in the store. They ignored him and proceeded to shop! We finally got the all clear, went back to work & this couple was standing at a register waiting impatiently to be checked out. They said there was no reason why we shouldn't be working and they were serious, not to mention very mean about it!

I honestly don't understand why anyone would be more concerned about their groceries than their own lives. Maybe Midwesterners are getting to complacent as firemedic911 mentioned.