NCAR’s Mary Hayden, referring to a survey she and colleague Rebecca Morss conducted following 2008’s Hurricane Ike, which killed more than 100 people in Texas and Louisiana. As Ike approached, threatening to bring a potentially catastrophic storm surge, the Houston-area National Weather Service office issued a statement that warned of “certain death” for those who didn’t evacuate some areas.

Out of 49 local residents interviewed by Hayden and Morss, about 20% said that the dire message helped spur them to evacuate, though one respondent said it actually motivated him to stay and prove the message wrong. Close to 30% said they never heard the message. Hayden reported on the ongoing research at the 2011 annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society, and a related paper appeared in the AMS journal Weather, Climate, and Society.

During the question-and-answer session following the talk, Barry Goldsmith (NWS/Brownsville, Texas)—who developed the “certain death” terminology for storm surge following 2005’s Hurricane Katrina while working in the NWS’s Tampa office—said the message filled a need but was now being supplanted by more nuanced phrasing.

Hurricane Ike approaches the upper Texas coast. (Satellite image courtesy NOAA.)

See all News