Tornado season is here which has us thinking how people react to bad conditions. Kim Klockow-McClain from the University of Oklahoma studies how people respond to severe weather alerts, and joins us to discuss the risks of over-warning and how social media has impacted the communication of critical weather information.

Klockow-McClain is a research scientist and Societal Applications Coordinator with the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS) at the University of Oklahoma and the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL).

Her research involves behavioral science focused on weather and climate risk, and specifically explores the effects of risk visualization on judgment, and perceptions of severe weather risk from place-based and cognitive perspectives.

Before joining CIMMS/NSSL, Klockow-McClain was a UCAR Postdoctoral Researcher and Policy Advisor at the NOAA OAR Office of Weather and Air Quality. She completed her undergraduate education at Purdue University and graduate education at the University of Oklahoma.

About the Across the Sky podcast

The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team:

Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia.