2024 hurricane season: Experts concerned about people disregarding storm warnings

The National Hurricane Center is hoping that a rewrite of messages used to warn of tropical cyclone conditions will increase awareness after officials said too many people are disregarding the life-saving alerts.

Decades-old phrasing and vague wording such as “expected somewhere” used in wind-speed warnings are no longer resonating with people in harm's way, said NHC Deputy Director Jamie Rhome during a session at the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando last month.

“We’ve seen a dangerous trend over the last several years of people increasingly ignoring warnings, or not even knowing what they mean,” Rhome said. “I can remember a time when all of South Florida held its breath in anticipation of an issuance of a hurricane warning because a warning signaled ‘go.’ ”

The proposed changes to hurricane warnings are part of an ongoing review of how the National Hurricane Center can improve its communication with the public. This year, that includes substantial changes to the notorious hurricane forecast track cone, which the NHC would like to de-emphasize in favor of more attention being paid to threats, such as storm surge.

"We have to get off this fixation with the cone and get it on the watches and warnings," Rhome said.

A hurricane warning is typically issued 36 hours ahead of the onset of tropical storm-force winds so that people have time to prepare, including putting up storm shutters, gathering supplies or readying to flee if they live in an evacuation zone.

The proposed changes, which would need to be approved by the World Meteorological Organization, would be subtle at first. The word “danger” would be added and featured prominently in the hurricane warning, and ambiguous words such as “expected somewhere” would be removed.

In a tropical storm warning, the words “significant risk” would appear in the beginning of the alert.

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“This is us refocusing on the warnings, possibly polishing them up to fit for modern society, because we don’t think the current trend of dismissing them is a good one,” Rhome said.

There are no plans to change the wording for tropical cyclone watches, which are issued 48 hours in advance of tropical storm-force winds reaching an area.

Watches and warnings, which are issued for a wide range of weather events, have specific definitions that differ based on the event, but the underlying connotations are the same.

A watch means the ingredients are there for potential trouble.

A warning means the trouble is happening or imminent.

NHC hurricane specialists Robbie Berg, who also has a master’s degree in communications, said the proposed changes are a culmination of years of work with social scientists on ways to improve how the hurricane center delivers information to the public.

He said the the tropical storm and hurricane warnings issued by the NHC are more accurate than people may think. Meteorologists aren't just crying wolf.

In a study that looked at 943 NHC advisories that had a hurricane warning in effect between 1987 and 2018, about 73% of the warnings were accurate, meaning hurricane conditions occurred somewhere within the warning area. When they looked at tropical storm and hurricane warnings together, the accuracy rate was 87%.

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"Our hurricane warnings are fairly effective," Berg said.

The social scientists have also recommended multiple changes to the hurricane forecast track cone.

This year, the center released an experimental cone graphic that it will begin issuing in mid-August. The prototype cone emphasizes inland watches and warnings, adding color-coded swaths that represent where tropical storm and hurricane force-winds might reach beyond the coast.

In the new graphic, the shaded area of the cone disappears at the coastline so that instead of focusing on the exact dimensions of the cone — and whether you are inside of it or outside of it — the focus is on the color-coded watches and warnings.

“I looked at the new cone, and I thought it looked like a leprechaun threw up,” said Orlando-area WKMG News meteorologist Tom Sorrells at the hurricane conference. “Now, I think I can use it to message better. I’m into it now.”

Sorrells said in 2004’s Hurricane Charley, which made landfall in Southwest Florida near Punta Gorda, damaging winds ripped across the entire state. Ahead of landfall, however, few people were talking about potential wind gusts of 90 mph in Winter Park, which is north of Orlando.

“Everyone thinks of hurricanes as a coastal event, and they are, but they’re not also,” Sorrells said. “They cut into the interior, too.”  

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The cone, which was first introduced in 2002, is brilliant in its graphical simplicity. But that is also its downfall as people fall into the trap of thinking a hurricane's winds, storm surge and flooding rain will fit neatly inside the confines of the fuzzy white funnel, and that the tropical cyclone will track down the middle.

Instead, the center of a storm can track anywhere inside the cone with impacts far afield. Thirty-three percent of the time, the storm travels outside the cone.

Rhome said there is a heightened urgency about getting the public’s attention following 2022's Hurricane Ian, where people stayed on barrier islands despite a storm surge warning that was issued 43 hours ahead of landfall.

Also, he's concerned about what would happen if a storm similar to 2023's Category 5 Hurricane Otis took aim at Florida. Otis made landfall near Acapulco, Mexico, on Oct. 25 with 165 mph winds. Twenty-four hours ahead of that, Otis was a tropical storm that was forecast to peak as a Category 1 hurricane.

NHC meteorologists called it a “nightmare scenario” in a forecast a few hours before Otis reached the coast.

“We think there is enough of a possibility of this happening here that we would like to see more discussion about what we would do,” Rhome said. “I know enough about emergency management to know that is going to be pure chaos.”

Kimberly Miller is a veteran journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate and how growth affects South Florida's environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.