Role of Rain as Perception Aid in Assessing Wind Speeds and Associated Personal Risks

Abstract

Abstract Extreme event perception drives personal risks and, consequently, dictates household decision-making before, during, and after extreme events. Given this, increasing the extreme event perception accuracy of the public is important to improving decision-making in extreme event scenarios; however, limited research has been done on this subject. Results of a laboratory experiment, in which 76 human participants were exposed to hurricane-strength weather conditions and asked to estimate their intensities and associated personal risks, are presented in this article. Participants were exposed to a range of identical wind speeds [20, 40, 60 mph (1 mph = 1.61 km h−1)] with [8 in. h−1 (1 in. = 2.54 cm)] and without rain. They then provided estimates of the perceived wind and rain (when present) speeds, and associated personal risks on a nominal scale of 0 to 10. Improvements in the accuracy of wind speed perception at higher speeds were observed when rain was present in the wind field (41.5 and 69.1 mph) than when it was not (45.2 and 75.8 mph) for 40- and 60-mph wind speed exposures, respectively. In contrast, risk perceptions were similar for both rain and nonrain conditions. This is particularly interesting because participants failed to estimate rain intensities (both horizontal and wind-driven rain) by a significant margin. The possible implications of rain as a perception aid to wind and the viability of using perception aids to better convey extreme weather risks are discussed. The article concludes by revisiting discussions about the implications of past hurricane experience on wind intensity perception, personal risk assessment, and future directions in extreme weather risk perception research.