With the most deadly tornadoes, even advanced warning may not reduce fatalities, according to a new study. Though the results are based on only a few cases, scientists found that with the worst tornadoes, increasing the warning time may actually increase the number of deaths they cause.
The researchers say they don't have enough evidence to conclude that greater advance notice is a bad thing, but their findings do indicate that more warning time alone may not be the answer to tornado threats.
"If an F-5 [the most severe type of tornado] hits your house, unless you're in a [reinforced] safe room, it probably doesn't matter if you had two minutes of warning or an hour of warning," said Kevin Simmons, an economist at Austin College in Texas who conducted the study with economist Daniel Sutter at the University of Texas-Pan American. "That thing is so powerful, there's a pretty high probability you're going to be injured or killed."
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