When the National Weather Service (NWS) issues a tornado warning, it is a call to immediate action. This typically means following instructions such as “take shelter now” because a tornado has been detected on radar or observed on the ground.
The primary recommendation is to shelter in interior rooms, such as bathrooms or closets, maximizing the distance between yourself and the building’s exterior (Figure 1). At the same time, the NWS often advises mobile home residents to leave immediately and seek sturdier shelter, since even lower EF-scale tornadoes can be deadly, capable of flipping, tossing or rolling structures and causing serious injuries or fatalities.
One challenge with this guidance is that tornado warnings are often very brief, averaging just 14 minutes between issuance and tornado impact within the warning area. Tornadoes that occur overnight pose additional difficulties: darkness, rain or hail can obscure visual cues, such as seeing a tornado on the horizon.
For mobile and manufactured home (MMH) residents, following the advice to evacuate is not always feasible, particularly for those without nearby shelters – either private or public. To address this behavior gap, we aimed to encourage individuals living in MMHs or high-rise apartments to preemptively seek shelter with friends or family in safer, site-built homes, ideally during the latter part of a tornado watch and prior to a potential tornado warning.
Building a communications strategy and products
I worked closely with my team to develop an effective way to communicate this message, drawing inspiration from my outsider perspective. As a foreign-born resident of Oklahoma, I often heard locals thank me for “visiting with them.” At first, I was puzzled by the phrase, until I realized it simply meant having a conversation or catching up with friends and family.
This sparked the idea for a severe weather campaign called “Time for a Visit,” designed to encourage MMH residents to leave their homes and seek safety in a friend’s or family member’s secure, permanent home ahead of a storm – particularly when public shelters are not readily available. Acting during a tornado watch not only increases response time but also frames the evacuation positively, with the added benefit of connecting with loved ones. Collaborating with colleagues allowed me to develop the messages ensuring they were concise and easily readable at a 4-inch-by-6-inch size for magnets.
Language is important for communicating how to stay safe and reduce worry while monitoring the weather, but it is even more effective when paired with imagery. Two of our posters/magnets depict a TV turned on to severe weather coverage, giving viewers both written and visual cues to track the weather. The graphics are intentionally cartoon-like and friendly, showing people of diverse races, ages and family or friend groups.
Engagement strategies and metrics
In today’s social media-driven world, many people consume news and weather updates through apps. We developed a targeted social media strategy to reach our intended audience and track engagement.
This initial plan is flexible and iterative, allowing for adaptation based on feedback and engagement. I am currently collaborating with a local high school teacher and her students to improve our social media campaign, focusing on maximizing engagement and interest.
Measuring success
Good outreach requires metrics to understand both reach and engagement, but the overriding goal is reducing fatalities and injuries during severe weather. While directly proving lives saved is difficult, we can estimate potential impacts by comparing observed and historical sheltering behaviors, examining fatalities or injuries in tornado-affected counties and compiling survivor stories.
Enriching our campaign through comic strips
The “Time for a Visit” campaign primarily targets adults in MMHs or upper-level apartments. It may not be possible to visit with a friend or family in a stronger permanent house every time a tornado watch is issued. Therefore, the campaign also emphasizes staying alert to weather forecasts and monitoring information through TV, apps or social media. Two comics were created using the Pixton platform – one aimed at older teens and young adults who may make autonomous decisions in severe weather events – and one aimed at younger children. The comic strips are crafted to evoke emotion, stimulate thought and model correct behaviors.
Comics have been used in safety and health messaging since the 1940s and are particularly effective for engaging children and adults with lower literacy levels (Sharpe & Izadkhah, 2014). Figures 3 and 4 are extracts from comic strips developed to support the “Time for a Visit” campaign.
Note that a large amount of information can be included in just one panel: not only text, but the situation or scene, lighting, facial expressions and interactions of the characters. This allows the reader to mentally place themselves in the situation shown.
In conclusion, designing a message tailored to a specific audience across multiple age groups can be challenging. Developing a strategy and creating supporting materials helps bring a project’s vision to life throughout its lifecycle. Hopefully, the ideas and examples shared here can inspire your next project, offering a pathway to more inclusive communication that promotes meaningful behavior change.
If you would like to learn more, join me for “Expanding Risk Communication Through the Use of Comics” from 10-11 a.m. CT on Wednesday, Nov. 12. This webinar will show you how to put comics to work in your own projects. Reserve your spot now! If you’d like to connect beforehand, please reach out (see contact info below). Register for the webinar.
Citation
Sharpe J, Izadkhah YO (2014) Use of comic strips in teaching earthquakes to kindergarten children. Disaster Prevent Manage 23(2):138–156. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-05-2013-0083.
Meet the author
Justin Sharpe, Ph.D.
VORTEX-SE Research Engagement Specialist
Justin Sharpe serves as a Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment-Southeast (VORTEX-SE) research engagement specialist at Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant. He is based at The... Read more
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