Tornado Town Hall Meetings Help Researchers

If you live in Moore, Oklahoma and have experience with tornadoes, researchers from the University of Oklahoma and the National Weather Service would like to hear what you have to say.

The second in a series of tornado town hall meetings will be held at the Moore Community Center, 301 S. Howard Ave. on Monday, September 24th. The free meeting will begin at 7:00 PM and end around 8:30 PM.

The tornado town hall meeting is free and open to the public, but the researchers hope to attract mostly residents of Moore. A meeting on September 6th focused on the Norman area, and a third meeting on October 4th will target the Newcastle area. Participants will first fill out a brief questionnaire, then participate in small and large group discussions. People will be asked about local perceptions regarding how risk prone different towns are, where tornadoes go and do not go, and where/how they obtained this knowledge.

The goal of the research is ultimately to better communicate tornado risk in real-time to the public. A study done following the April 27, 2011 tornado outbreak in the southeast U.S.revealed that local risk perceptions shaped the way people understood and responded to the outbreak as it happened. Scientists communicating about tornado threat know nothing abouthow these perceptions influence behavior, and to communicate better, steps must be taken tounderstand and account for these other ways of knowing.