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This book represents a decade of study by the authors, using such sources as NOAA and the U.S. Census on the economic and social effects of some 1,200 tornadoes that touch down across the U.S. annually. Analyzes economic and casuality statistics and more.

For almost a decade, economists Kevin M. Simmons and Daniel Sutter have been studying the economic impacts and social consequences of the approximately 1,200 tornadoes that touch down across the United States annually. During this time, Simmons and Sutter have been compiling information from sources such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Census in order to examine the casualties caused by tornadoes and to evaluate the National Weather Service's efforts to reduce these casualties. In Economic and Societal Impacts of Tornadoes, Simmons and Sutter present their findings. This analysis will be useful to anyone studying meteorology and imperative for anyone working in emergency disaster management.

We explore the impact of tornado watches on tornado casualties. The time needed to take shelter for a tornado can be as little as a few minutes, but because warning lead times averaged less than 15 minutes in 2004, a watch could alert residents to be ready to receive and respond to a later warning. We find that casualties per tornado are greater for tornadoes occurring within a tornado watch, although this difference vanishes when controlling for tornado, warning, and path characteristics in a regression analysis. We find no evidence that watches reduce casualties, either directly or by increasing the effectiveness of tornado warnings. Tornadoes occurring within watches are more often warned for and warnings reduce casualties, so watches do contribute to lives saved through the warning process.

AbstractThis paper extends prior research on the societal value of tornado warnings to the impact of false alarms. Intuition and theory suggest that false alarms will reduce the response to warnings, yet little evidence of a "false alarm effect" has been unearthed. This paper exploits differences in the false-alarm ratio across the United States to test for a false-alarm effect in a regression model of tornado casualties from 1986 to 2004. A statistically significant and large false-alarm effect is found: tornadoes that occur in an area with a higher false-alarm ratio kill and injure more people, everything else being constant. The effect is consistent across false-alarm ratios defined over different geographies and time intervals. A one-standard-deviation increase in the false-alarm ratio increases expected fatalities by between 12% and 29% and increases expected injuries by between 14% and 32%. The reduction in the national tornado false-alarm ratio over the period reduced fatalities by 4%–11% and injuries by 4%–13%. The casualty effects of false alarms and warning lead times are approximately equal in magnitude, suggesting that the National Weather Service could not reduce casualties by trading off a higher probability of detection for a higher false-alarm ratio, or vice versa.

Doppler radar installation by the National Weather Service (NWS) improved tornado warning performance, raising the probability of detection and mean lead time while reducing the false alarm ratio. Research on tornado casualties has established that a warning reduces tornado injuries while lead times of up to fifteen minutes also reduce tornado fatalities. In this paper we estimate the decrease in tornado casualties attributable to the observed change in the distribution of warning lead times, and thus provide evidence on the benefit to society of weather warning systems. We find that increases in warning lead times accounts for 30–50 percent of the reduction in injuries but no more than 1/4 of the reduction in fatalities which occurred with the installation of Doppler radar by the NWS. Future improvements in warning performance to further reduce tornado fatalities by 18 percent and injuries by 24 percent.

This article estimates the cost effectiveness of tornado shelters using the annual probability of a tornado and new data on fatalities per building struck by a tornado. This approach differs from recent estimates of the cost effectiveness of tornado shelters in Reference 1 that use historical casualties. Historical casualties combine both tornado risk and resident action. If residents of tornado‐prone states take greater precautions, observed fatalities might not be much higher than in states with lower risk. Estimation using the tornado probability avoids this potential bias. Despite the very different method used, the estimates are $68 million in permanent homes and $6.0 in mobile homes in Oklahoma using a 3% real discount rate, within about 10% of estimates based on historical fatalities. The findings suggest that shelters provide cost‐effective protection for mobile homes in the most tornado‐prone states but not for permanent homes.

AbstractIn April 2014, the city of Moore, Oklahoma, adopted enhanced building codes designed for wind-resistant construction. This action came after Moore suffered three violent tornadoes in 14 yr. Insured loss data and a rigorous approach to estimating how much future damage can be mitigated is used to conduct a benefit–cost analysis of the Moore standards applied to the entire state of Oklahoma. The results show that the new codes easily pass the benefit–cost test for the state of Oklahoma by a factor of 3 to 1. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis is conducted on each of the five input variables to identify the threshold where each variable causes the benefit–cost test to fail. Variables include the estimate of future losses, percent of damage that can be reduced, added cost, residential share of overall losses, and the discount rate.

AbstractIndigenous stories are the backbone of Indigenous education systems. While Indigenous communities are still grappling with settler colonial‐imposed violence, many Indigenous Nations are engaging in what Leanne Betasamosake Simpson describes as Indigenous resurgence. In our paper, we draw from our own Indigenous communities' teachings and discuss our peoples' ongoing storytelling traditions as important forms of resurgence, which contribute to a process Dene scholar Glen Sean Coulthard describes as grounded normativity. After setting the context for understanding Indigenous stories as a form of resurgent education, we then pay special attention to a well‐known collection of stories, first published in the book Anakú Iwachá in 1974, with a second edition published in 2021. We analyze the history of the project, examine key principles that make it a strong example of resurgence, and explain how it is a particularly instructive data source for social scientists to (1) better understand Indigenous knowledges within our storytelling traditions, (2) engage place‐based learning, and (3) imagine futures beyond settler colonialism. These aims, already central in Indigenous sociology, are currently at the margins of mainstream social sciences. We argue these aims provide a particularly hopeful remedy for U.S. sociology, which has generally ignored Indigenous Peoples' knowledges.

AbstractTornadoes are nature's most violent storm and annually cause billions of dollars in damage along with the threat of fatalities and injuries. To improve tornado warnings, the National Weather Service is considering a change from a deterministic to a probabilistic paradigm. While studies have been conducted on how individual behavior may change with the new warnings, no study of which we are aware has considered the effect this change may have on businesses. This project is a response to the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017, House of Representatives (H.R.) bill 353, which calls for the use of social and behavioral science to study and improve storm warning systems. The goal is to discuss business response to probabilistic tornado warnings through descriptive and regression-based statistics using a survey administered to businesses in north Texas. Prior to release, the survey was vetted by a focus group composed of businesses in Grayson County, Texas, who assisted in the creation of a behavior ranking scale. The scale ranked behaviors from low to high effort. Responses allowed for determining whether the business reacted to the warning in a passive or active manner. Returned surveys came from large and small businesses in north Texas and represent a wide variety of industries. Regression analysis explores which variables have the greatest influence on the behavior of businesses and show that, beyond increases in probability from the probabilistic warnings, trust in the warning provides the most significant change to behavior.

AbstractTornadoes impose enormous costs on society. Relatively simple and inexpensive enhancements to building codes may reduce these costs by 30% or more, but only one city in the United States has adopted these codes. Why is this the case? This analysis addresses this question by examining homeowner support for more stringent building codes in Oklahoma, a conservative state that routinely experiences damaging tornadoes. Survey data show that support for mandatory mitigation policies like building codes is subject to countervailing forces. Push dynamics, including objective risk data, homeowners' risk perceptions, and damage experience, encourage support for mitigation. Pull dynamics, such as individualistic and conservative worldviews, and skepticism about climate change, generate opposition. At the margin, the pull dynamics appear to exert more force than push dynamics, creating only a weak basis of support that is not strong enough to overcome the status quo bias in a state that is cautious about regulatory measures. The concluding section offers suggestions for changing these dynamics.