I understand the need for alerting people to bad weather, but the TV stations take it to the extreme. They go wall to wall and repeat the same information over and over. They should only go live if the tornado is on the ground. The continual hype and non stop blathering play a part in people not being weather aware.
I remember one TV weather caster go so excited he had a tornado on TV to show the audience. Turned out to be smoke from a smokestack in the distance :-)
It's like anything else - there is good, bad and ugly.
You ought to live down here on the Gulf Coast....these weathermen live for hurricane season......you can hardly get through a day without them breathlessly announcing a low pressure system off the coast of Africa that might, maybe, could head into the Gulf and hit land in FL-MS-AL-LA - we were hit pretty badly six years ago but really have had nothing since, thank goodness! Every year it’s the same thing - a prediction of a 1000 named storms.
Yeah, my 88 year old mother still lives in the Golden Age of television and believes every word they spew. She spends much of her life terrified about severe thunderstorms and lake-effect blizzards that never materialise.
My favorite, though, is when they tell us how to dress when it gets cold. It's freakin' Buffalo! We already know!
I respectfully disagree.
I live in an area - NE Oklahoma - frequented by severe weather. Tornadoes, severe thunderstorms with damaging straight winds, damaging hail, etc. Having lived here most of my life, I can make up my own mind as to what precautions / reactions I need to take based on what the radar tracks and storm spotter reports are. With this kind of weather, a few miles difference in location or observed / predicted track can make all the difference, and I pay close attention to these reports. They are a heck of a lot more important to me than some meaningless basketball game or sitcom.
As for repeating the same information "over an over", what I watch for is current information on storm location / track / status.
Perhaps folks who live in areas of the country where this kind of weather is less frequent may look on it differently, but during a severe weather outbreak we monitor radar on the net, reports on TV and on the radio, and by standing outside and looking at the clouds and color of the sky. I don't take shelter if it is not necessary, but I want to be well aware of current conditions so that I can decide if it *is* necessary.
I appreciate the TV (and radio) coverage, and I must point out that it has saved countless lives. If folks ignore it, well, whose fault is that?