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Comment by jcranmer | Hacker News Reader

When the tornado sirens go off, you have at most a half-hour of warning of an approaching tornado, and generally fewer than 10 minutes. With that level of warning, you don't have time to tell your employees not to come in--they're either already there or are on the way. (And if they're on the way, then they probably need to execute the "get out of the car and hide in the ditch" phase of tornado preparedness anyways).

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Do you really think this was unknown until the tornado sirens sounded?

Every news station in the region was warning of this storm, but i guess if you look it from a capitalist prospective why take the risk that you accidentally needlessly save a human life at the expense of some profits by canceling the unneeded 3 AM FUCKING MIDNIGHT SHIFT, when you can count on people on hacker news to justify the human cost of your business.

You are willfully ignoring the reality of living in a tornado-prone region. Tornado watches are issued when conditions are favorable for tornados to form. These watches cover hundreds and hundreds of miles (a large part of a state or sometimes even multiple states). They last for many hours. They happen a few dozen times a year for any given location. Tornado watches simply mean "conditions are favorable, keep an eye on the weather" but do not otherwise really impact people's planning or behavior. Do you really expect every business to shut down for 6+ hours each time a tornado watch is issued, dozens of times a year? People who live here and deal with tornados know how they work and none of them would expect their place of business to close just due to a tornado watch.

Tornado warnings are acute, cover a very small area (by weather standards), and come with only minutes notice (and usually only last for 10-30 minutes). Tornado warnings just mean "shelter in place now". There is not time from a warning to do things like drive home from work or cancel a shift. If someone gets a warning as they are about to leave for work, they usually would just shelter without needing to be contacted by work. Due to the size of tornado warning areas, it's likely that a warning at your house may not cover your place of employment or vice-versa. If an employer penalizes an employee for being late because they were sheltering due to a tornado warning, then that is something that they deserve to be criticized for.

You're willfully ignoring this particular weather system, and just talking about tornadoes and tornado warnings in general. People knew this system was going to be exceptionally, maybe historically bad, and they knew it well (meaning days) in advance.

If it was truly so obvious, the government should have issued evacuation orders days in advance.

They didn't because that isn't the case.

So what exactly do you think should have been done instead? Do you think people across a half dozen states should have been told to stay home all day Friday/Saturday?

> They happen a few dozen times a year for any given location.

Not really, no: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/2021_torww_to_date.png

The map is a little difficult to read, but I don’t believe “any given location” has reached even 10 watches in 2021. 171 total have been issued, which seems like a lot at first, but generally multiple watches are going to be issued on one day, so there are relatively few days a year on which TOR watches are being issued, even in areas where they are likelier to be issued.

Life shouldn’t shut down because of a TOR watch, but some people around here are acting like they’re a very common occurrence when they absolutely are not.

That's an interesting map. What does "Initial WOU only" mean? According to NWS, "WOU" is Watch Outline Update. Does that mean that as storms track east and they expand the watch, they don't include those updated regions?

I live in an area shown on that map as having only been under 2 tornado watches in 2021, and I know with certainty that my area has been under more than 2 tornado watches this year. Frequently the watches are issued further west and expanded to cover my area, though.

(edit) This map seems to be more what I would expect: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/20ytora.png My estimate of a few dozen was a bit high, but still this graph shows a large part of the country that averages around 10 or more watches per year. I think my point still stands, though, that people aren't going to put life on hold and take shelter every time there's a tornado watch issued.

A tornado, as someone else put it, is a razor blade cutting across the landscape. The best predictor of whether or not you'll survive a tornado is if you're in that very thin path of destruction. And that path is not known until very, very short time horizons before the event.

As far as a manager knows, the factory is as risky a place to be in a tornado as wherever the workers' homes are. Actually, you can make some cases for the factory being less risky than homes: if the home is a trailer park, well, that is almost certainly toast in a tornado; additionally, workers are going to be awake at the factory versus at home, and are therefore more able to respond to a tornado siren going off.

(This does make some assumptions about the factory having appropriate tornado shelter, and having reasonable policies around what to do in event of tornado warning. I don't have enough information to know if those assumptions hold, but if they don't hold, I would ABSOLUTELY castigate the company for failing those assumptions.)

"We can't save human lives by not forcing them to come into work at the threat of firing and loss of livelihood because we might accidentally save a life that wasn't in danger if we let employees make that risk assessment for themselves by giving them the option to choose."

As far as the manager knows its none of their fucking business because the employee should be the one who makes that call about their personal safety, not their manager, and said employee can't freely make that call if they face reprisal or loss of promotion for doing so.

You're clearly trying to use this tragedy to push some sort of anti-capitalist mission, so I know you will not be willing to see anyone else's point of view. For the benefit of others, though, here is the map the NWS issued showing areas of concern:

https://twitter.com/NWSSPC/status/1469445198501408774

Note that tornados occurred that night in areas well beyond just the red zone. So, to be "safe" (though being home is not necessarily safer - not everyone has basements and many people live on 2nd-floor apartments, etc.), should we have told everyone at least in the "ENH" area (covering major portions of 6 states) to stay home and in their basement for the whole night?

>should we have told everyone at least in the "ENH" area (covering major portions of 6 states) to stay home and in their basement for the whole night?

Yes.

As someone else said, "evidence you have never lived in the midwest."

That enhanced area covers St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville, and Memphis. Millions and millions of people that you expect to spend the night in their basements (many of which don't even have a basement), on the still-very-remote chance they may get hit by a tornado. Even in this abnormally bad outbreak, we're talking about just 100s of people impacted. The risk is just not high enough for that kind of response.

Stay home, yes. The point of staying at home is to be near your basement if you have one, so the part about staying in your basement all night is silly.

We've had people telling us to stay home for two years to dodge a particularly dangerous cold, so if the idea that not having a single night shift during such a rare and predictable weather situation is supposed to be shocking on its face, I'm not feeling it.

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