DELUGE OF DATA
Is social media sharing skewing our perceptions of extreme weather?
On June 30, 1912, a tornado left a trail of destruction through Regina, destroying 500 buildings, killing 28 and injuring hundreds. It was the only reported tornado for that year in Saskatchewan.
Contrast that with 2016, which has had 10 times as many reported tornadoes touching down in the province. On top of that, several communities have been hit with torrential rains and damaging hailstorms. Social media was also filled with pictures of flooded homes in Estevan, and stories of evacuations of northern communities in June and July.
At first glance, this may give the impression that extreme weather is more common than in years past. Is this actually the case, or is our access to information inflating our perceptions?
Was the Regina Cyclone the only tornado of that year, or were no other tornadoes officially reported in the sparsely populated prairies of the time?
The Regina Cyclone of 1912 was the deadliest tornado in Canadian history but it would be two days before the Toronto World newspaper reported on it. Another three days would pass until the residents of New Glasgow read about the disaster.
Today, if a tornado touches down near a farm 500 kilometres from Regina, pictures will most likely begin to appear on social media within minutes and it will be reported to Environment Canada soon after.
A tornado near a small farm, hours from any large urban centre in 1912, would become a story told by locals and little more.
As information becomes readily available, it can be easy for that information to lead to the belief that the weather is becoming more extreme. It is a trend that has been observed since the early days of television and it is seen outside of weather. For example, as information about crime becomes more accessible, it leads to a belief that crime is much more prevalent today than it has been in the past. In actuality, while crime went up five per cent in 2015 nationwide, it was down 31 per cent from just 10 years ago.
It all comes down to Mean World Syndrome, a phrase coined by George Gerbner in the 1960s. It follows the concept that mass media makes viewers believe that the world is more dangerous than it actually is. Social media has only amplified this in recent years. It is something meteorologists and storm chasers know all too well.
“It is the awareness of the event going on,” said Dan Kulak, meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. “In 1991, there were no cellphone video cameras. We only knew about the things that happened in those years when they were reported to us.”
Kulak said while reporting of extreme weather has vastly increased, it does not mean the weather events themselves have increased.
“I think it is awareness of what is happening, and it is an uncertainty of the amount of stuff being reported. The more reports we get, the greater the probability of detecting an event, even though the rate of occurrence of that event is not changing.”
Between 1991 and 2012 in Saskatchewan, there were yearly averages of 49 severe hail events, 19 wind events, six heavy rain events and 13 tornado events. (Severe hail is defined as hail large than 20 millimetres, severe wind is wind 90 km/h or more and heavy rain is 50 millimetres of rain in an hour.)
This year, despite the appearance that the weather is getting worse, everything has actually been near average, including tornado events. As of Aug. 16, there were 76 severe hail events, 19 heavy wind events, 13 tornadoes and nine heavy rain events. Except for severe hail events, everything else is average for a typical summer.
In each of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, there is an average of 50 tornadoes per year, but Kulak says that those are only the reported tornadoes. The number could be as high as 200.
The 13 tornadoes this year may seem high for Saskatchewan, but this figure is far below the 23 seen in 2012. In fact, June 15 of that year saw eight tornadoes, one more than we saw in all of July this year.
On July 18, 21 and 24 of 2012 alone, a total of 11 tornadoes touched down throughout Saskatchewan.
Greg Johnson, the Regina-based host of CMT’s Tornado Hunters, spends his year travelling through Tornado Alley in the U.S. and into the Prairies.
While his job is all about extreme weather, he agrees that the perception of extreme weather is not the reality.
“There is no evidence to say that the severe weather is getting worse. The fact is that a tornado 20 years ago would go unreported, but is impossible to go unreported today,” Johnson said.
Johnson added that when weather records are broken, such as heat or rainfall, it only means that there was a period in the past where the weather was just as extreme on that day.
“You will have hot weather that breaks a 100-year record, but that means that 100 years ago, there was a pretty hot day as well,” Johnson said.
“When it comes to specific tornadoes, those weather events, there is no basis for this popular notion that things are going to hell in a handcart.”
A quick glance at extreme weather events in Saskatchewan’s history shows that most extreme records occurred decades ago. The hottest month ever recorded in Saskatchewan’s history was not in 2016, or even this century. It was July of 1926 when the average maximum temperature was 35.8 degrees C.
Facebook feeds over the past month have been full of pictures of hailstones next to coins, golf balls and tennis balls, for size comparison.
The heaviest hailstone in Saskatchewan’s history was a halfpound stone that fell near Cedoux on Aug. 27, 1973.
Even Regina’s hottest day ever doesn’t come close to this century. It was on July 5, 1937 when the temperature hit 43.9 C.
Johnson has seen the power of extreme weather on social media for himself. A photo of a Saskatchewan storm that he posted on Facebook on Aug. 10 currently has 1,310 shares and 928 likes. Another picture from Estevan, posted on July 11, has 2,110 shares and more than 6,000 likes.
“What I see is a lot of people posting a lot of pictures. I get it,” he said. “We had a great storm roll through yesterday and a bunch of farmers got four inches of rain. Whether it is a tornado or four inches of rain that destroys your crop, it still hurts. These things have been going on forever.”
For the average citizen that enjoys taking pictures of storms as they roll through the area, or sharing photos others have taken, there is the feeling that today’s mass media and social media are skewing the views in regards to extreme weather.
“I think it is making people more aware of it,” said Carla Danielson, who recently had a storm photo published in the Leader-Post. “I don’t know if it reflects if there are more of those storms. Ten years ago I would have only seen it on the news, so I think it does raise the perception.”
Robert Yee, a Regina resident who enjoys capturing pictures of storms, also feels that social media has amplified the perception of extreme weather being common.
“Everyone has a smartphone now. Everyone can post immediately, so it makes it seem like it is more prevalent,” Yee said. “I have pictures of shelf clouds in 1999 and 2002 but there is no way to distribute them.”
Nearly every smartphone has a weather app on it and that can lead to a multitude of weather alerts when adverse weather conditions are possible. There is a good and bad side to this plethora of bulletins. If people think there is more adverse weather, they may plan ahead for it. On the flip side, if there are too many alerts, people may become desensitized to it.
Danielson sees the watches as something important, even if a storm doesn’t develop.
“The watches and warnings are valuable so that I can know they are happening,” she said. “The fact that there are a lot of them doesn’t make me anxious, but I don’t disregard it.”
Paying attention to alerts is important, according to Kulak, but he stresses that non-alert storms are just as dangerous.
“If people have a perception that there is more, they will take more action to deal with extreme weather,” Kulak said. “The double edge is the perception can be that unless there is a severe storm, people will think that a non-severe storm is not going to cause damage.”
Kulak states that lightning kills more people each year than any other weather event. According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, an average of 10 people are killed each year by lightning. In contrast, 47 people have been killed by tornadoes in the past 30 years. Two Alberta tornadoes, the Black Friday Tornado in 1987 and the Pine Lake Tornado in 2000, account for 39 of those deaths.
“Things like tornadoes get more attention, but it is lightning that is the real killer and it comes from storms without any other warnings. People get used to dealing with dark clouds and rumbles of thunder in the distance,” Kulak said. “There is no obvious sign of a hail shaft or tornado, so they don’t seek shelter until the storm is on them. That is too late to seek shelter.
“Most fatalities are from storms that don’t meet requirements for weather warnings.”
When you see a tornado picture online, or a video of flood waters in a community, remember that while we know more about what happens in the world, it doesn’t always mean that what happens in the world is happening more.