We warn too much
The word warning used to mean something: caution, alert, alarm. Like the robot in the old TV series Lost in Space that droned, “Danger, Will Robinson.” If you recall, the robot’s warnings always verified.
The other day, as I drove past the Walgreens store at 57th and Cliff, I couldn’t help but notice large, red words on their electronic sign that screamed, “FLOOD WARNING.” I immediately felt cautioned, alerted, alarmed – and confused, since there was no rain in the forecast on this February day. Then I thought about the sign and figured out what was going on. The store is located on the southeast corner of 57th and Cliff, meaning that it is 50 feet inside the Lincoln County border. Had the store been on the northeast corner of the same intersection, there would have been no warning at all, because no warnings were in effect for Minnehaha County.
The warning itself was posted because of the potential for lowland flooding of farmland along the Big Sioux River on the opposite end of Lincoln County, many miles from where that sign was warning passing motorists. I’m not criticizing Walgreens, because the sign was displaying a valid warning for the county in which it was located; nor am I criticizing the National Weather Service, which issued a perfectly valid, by-the-book, weather alert.
Here is the problem: every motorist who saw that sign probably imagined it was bogus, or at least another exaggeration of a perceived threat to their person or property. In weather, just as in every daily newspaper and newscast, we have so needlessly over-used the word warning that it is largely ignored. Just within the past few hours, there have been warnings published about the financial markets, oil supplies, North Korea, Twitter, and tenant cannabis farms. Who can stand the stress and anxiety of all these warnings? I mean, we can be alarmed about only so many things before warning fatigue sets in.
As we head into the warm season, we will soon be warned about everything from penny-size hail to violent tornadoes. Regardless of the severity of the threat, the weather and broadcast industries will be working hard to make sure that every weather warning receives thorough coverage on every electronic medium.
Yet people have become so de-sensitized to the incessant warnings they receive each day that the question asked after most of these storms will be not whether it came without warning, but rather whether anybody paid attention.
