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There was a documentary on the tornado in Joplin, MO where someone was visiting the area from California. They were dining at a local restaurant when the sirens started sounding. They were alarmed, but locals around them didn't react and reassured them that "this happens all the time" and wasn't something to be concerned about.
And then the tornado came right through town.
So a lot of locals in weather-prone areas are desensitized to the warnings, even when the klaxons really do go off.
Then again, the opposite can also happen. My father grew up in Kansas, and is the most weather-aware person I know: when I was a teenager/young adult he would always have the forecast memorized. There were lots of "wait, you're going where today? There's severe weather coming in, possible hail." When he learned he could access weather information at any time on his computer, I'm pretty sure it was like a revelation for him.
As someone who was in Tuscaloosa when we were hit earlier that year I chalk the local nonchalance up to a few things. Aside from the over-prevalence of false alarms it's hard to really comprehend what "this happens" means unless it happens to you. I shrugged it off as a joke even as I was dodging an EF-4 in my car delivering pizzas until I was rummaging around bombed out parts of town with my friend whose survival had suddenly been in doubt looking for his friends because communications were pretty much totally gone. I learned something about myself that week: It's easy enough for me to be personally brave or at least unconcerned with my safety enough to do something stupid like volunteer to take a delivery knowing full and well that there was a tornado on the ground. Holding it together in the face of people who'd lost something to everything and who'd only been guilty of being less fortunate than I was in the space of a few minutes was not so easy. The sense of suffering and apocalypse was overwhelming and not something I hope to witness again.
People were understandably more obedient toward the weather people for some years after (and to the meteorologists' credit they got it right on 4/27/11) but over time I guess you're going to be a worry-wart or not. Maybe my take isn't the healthiest, but it's this: If it's an EF-3 or less you're unlikely to get hit in the first place and probably will survive even if your house gets trashed. If it's an EF-4/5 after having seen brick apartment buildings and schools flattened I feel like there's not much point in worrying because unless you've got a bunker to climb into whether or not you survive is more a question of fate than weather awareness.
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Yeah, tornadoes are bad that way. Even where tornados are common, most of the time tornados hit somewhere else. With floods, it's a bit more predictable, they hit the same exact spots.
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