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One Good Reason You Should Take Future Tornado Warnings More Seriously

| April 27, 2017 @ 5:04 am

By Ike Pigott

James Spann has seen a lot in 38 years of broadcasting. Highs and lows of temperatures, highs and lows of ratings — and now a new high when it comes to storm prediction.

The long-time ABC 33/40 meteorologist spoke to the Gadsden Rotary Club on April 27, a date not lost on those who remember the carnage of six years prior. On that day, 62 confirmed tornadoes gouged Alabama, claiming 252 lives and destroying tens of thousands of homes. Spann says he takes every one of those deaths personally, and has made it a mission to improve how forecasts are made, and how warnings are delivered.

“People heard the warning, and they didn’t do anything,” Spann said. He added that the issue isn’t just one of math and models, but packaging the information in a way that spurs people to take it seriously. “Humans are strange people, just odd. We are very hard to figure out. I don’t understand it, and the lack of understanding of social science cost us lives that day.”One of the key findings from the research was that people in harm’s way did not do anything because of too many false alarms. Spann characterized the top result in a sentence: “We hear those tornado warnings all the time, and nothing ever happens.”

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