Does severe weather hype make people under-react?

Maybe it's global warming or simply the barrage of newscasters braving the elements to report from storm-ravaged areas mid-destruction -- most notably CNN business reporter Ali Velshi, who for some reason spent his 43rd birthday knee-deep in a Sandy-flooded intersection of Atlantic City -- but it sure does seem like our weather patterns are getting more extreme.

Not so, according to a 2011 study by the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project, which showed no evidence that weather trends have intensified in recent years [sources: Keene, Jolis].

Perhaps then it's just the hype surrounding severe weather events that has ramped up of late. During the week it made landfall, Hurricane Irene comprised 21 percent of all news covered, trailing only coverage of Middle East-related tensions, which garnered 26 percent of the news focus, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism [source: Meyers].

But it's not just the sheer amount of coverage of severe weather that feeds the hype machine. There's also something about the way in which these events are covered. It is a fundamental principle of journalism that speed should not be traded for accuracy. Yet it seems that some of the most intrepid of reporters are at times swept up in the fury of big weather.

For example, take the widely reported, yet completely false rumor that during the height of Sandy's onslaught on Manhattan, the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was flooded with up to 3 feet (1 meter) of water. This little nugget of information was never confirmed -- because it simply wasn't true -- but with water gushing all over the island (and Ali Velshi being whipped around by the wind in nearby New Jersey), it appears there was simply no time to worry about mundane matters like factual accuracy [source: Keene].

That's not to mention the way in which potential weather events are described. Reporters, government officials and experts who use terms like "catastrophic," "historic," and "unprecedented" to describe a storm without explaining just what makes a particular weather system unique do nothing but water down the gravity of these words. There are only so many times one can hear that a particular storm is the "big one" before he stops heeding warnings all together [source: Wemple].

But it's not just hype that leads people to underestimate severe weather. There are other reasons why some of us assume that all reports of oncoming storms are simply crying wolf.

Sandy and Irene weren't the first two storms to receive overwhelming attention before touching down. As Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast in August 2005, reporters swarmed to New Orleans, and Mississippi while officials warned residents of low-lying areas to run for it. Yet many chose ride out the storm.

In hindsight, some will certainly argue that this was one storm that was under-hyped: evacuation orders in New Orleans, for example, didn't include a warning that levees could break as a result of the storm [source: Rosenthal]. Yet the Sandy experience -- with many residents of the hardest-hit areas also choosing to wait out the storm in spite of "mandatory" evacuation calls -- is a testament to the fact that at least some people may never believe the hype associated with severe weather.

There are a number of behavioral factors behind the decision to batten down the hatches when the "big one" comes, even when the experts are telling you to get the hell out of Dodge. The first is called "unrealistic optimism," which, as its handle suggests, refers to a super glass half-full mentality. Some people just don't think anything seriously bad can happen to them. "Motivated reasoning," meanwhile, is a related behavioral pattern in which a person simply dismisses all the signs that the worst-case scenario (a direct hit from a hurricane, for example) may happen [sources: Ablow, Sunstein].

Where the hype comes in is by causing what is called "availability bias." In other words, a person considering the risks of a certain event -- an oncoming storm, perhaps -- may compare it to past similar events. After a handful of overhyped weather patterns, people in the danger zones of an oncoming storm may start to assume that the Weather Channel is selling wolf tickets, so to speak. Also called "the availability heuristic," this phenomenon has been attributed to many victims of Katrina, whom after years of hype and misses, simply believed the storm would pass them by once again [source: Sunstein].

Whether it's the next Irene or another Sandy, hype isn't the only reason why some people may underestimate the next superstorm, but it certainly doesn't help.