What part of "this is a dangerous storm take cover now" don't you understand? I guess a lot, for some people. Maybe its the definition of dangerous, or something unclear about what take cover means, or what now means. When a tornado warning is issued and the sirens sound people come out of their homes and look at the sky instead of going to their basement or shelter spot. Was it not a southern comedian who said "you can't fix stupid"?

The combination of tornado warnings being experienced without something tragic happening specifically to them, a high false alarm rate for weaker tornadoes (the majority), modern instant communication, and an understandable human inclination to want eyewitness evidence before action cause many people to fail to act appropriately to a tornado warning. I get it. See my previous post on understanding dual-pol Doppler radar and tornado warnings.

The National Weather Service will experiment in Missouri and Kansas the rest of the tornado season with new tornado warning language that will contain such phrases as "mass devastation," ''unsurvivable" and "catastrophic" in a new kind of warning that's based on the severity of a storm's expected impact. The goal is to more effectively communicate the dangers of an approaching storm so people understand the risks they're about to face.

Not ALL tornado warnings will have these words, only when the NWS feels the evidence from weather radar is strong enough or a tornado has been confirmed to be on the ground will a warning have the stronger wording. I hope it works. I have concerns it won't or will work for a while until people become numb to the new warnings, or confused about how seriously to take tornado warnings that do not have the stronger verbiage.

Remember, Doppler radar does not explicitly tell us how strong a tornado is when it's detected, (those EF ratings come after the fact based on the survey work of investigators), often Doppler does not indicate for sure that a tornado is on the ground but just that there is a strong possibility that a tornado has or will touch down. The detection rate for tornadoes is very high, problem is so is the false alarm rate.

I hope this works, it's worth testing. But I am skeptical since a tornado warning ALREADY means danger to life and property take cover now. Yet people often fail to heed that message. I am not sure saying "no really, this means you, it's serious" is going to help. The fact is local Weather Service offices have already been using so-called enhanced language whenever they felt justified in doing so. I am also concerned it might lead to an unintended consequence-- people taking even less and slower action than they do now for tornado warnings that do not include the most dire wording.