Can people accurately recognize and remember storm characteristics from past hurricanes?

Keywords: hurricanes, risk perception
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Previous research has found that many people base their risk assessment for a potential landfalling hurricane on a benchmark storm that previously hit the local area. Sometimes their risk assessment is accurate because the landfalling storm had similar characteristics to the benchmark storm. Often, risk assessment is flawed when the landfalling storm was much stronger (weaker) with more direct (less direct) impacts than what was anticipated. Since it is likely that people will continue to use a benchmark storm as guidance, it is important to begin to understand and possibly quantify if people can recognize past storm tracks and remember the maximum observed values for wind speed, storm surge, and total rainfall from major hurricanes within the last 20 years. Preliminary results show that 25 – 50 percent of central Gulf Coast residents of our sample could accurately recognize famous major hurricanes by their storm track. The correctly recognized storm track responses were then tested to see how many people could accurately recall the maximum wind speeds, storm surge, and rainfall amounts of those storms in categorical increments. Accuracy generally diminished with resident distance from the landfall location and also for older storms with a few notable exceptions. Formal analysis is still ongoing, but preliminary results show that perceptions and recall of benchmark storm characteristics appear to have discrepancies from the observed values.