For more on the future of forecasting, see SN‘s feature “Weather forecasting is getting a high-speed makeover.”
More advanced warnings of incoming weather systems sound like a great idea, but researchers are learning that people don’t always do what’s expected.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Severe Storms Laboratory is developing a system, called Warn-on-Forecast, that could one day provide tornado warnings an hour or more before a twister hits, more than quadrupling the current 14 minutes of warning time (SN: 5/2/15, p. 20). Forecasters, however, worry about how people will spend that extra time, says Kim Klockow, a meteorologist and behavioral scientist at University Corporation for Atmospheric Research who is based in Silver Spring, Md.