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Read. Understand. Apply.
The Warn Room blogs apply 70 years of research to the practice of alerts and warnings. We show how evidence-based changes to message content, style, and structure can create more effective warnings.


When a warning has ended, what do you say?
When a warning has ended, do you send a message or do you let silence speak for you? Do you let the public figure out that the coast is...

Jeannette Sutton
Aug 18


A preliminary assessment of WEAs issued for the July 29, 2025 Tsunami
This is a long post that includes a LOT of WEAs (14 to be exact). Because I followed the December 5, 2024 tsunami event fairly closely,...

Jeannette Sutton
Jul 30


Lessons on rumoring, style, and consistency from a haz-mat message
A colleague sent this message to me, calling attention to the words "hazardous materials" and asking what might be a more plain language...

Jeannette Sutton
Mar 14


Evacuation Orders are used for Floods too
We like to highlight good messages and this Evacuation Order for flooding hits most of the marks. Issued by the Sonoma County Sheriff's...

Jeannette Sutton
Feb 7


Incomplete messages put lives in danger
This past week, a catastrophic storm ripped through the Southeast US, leaving communities destroyed and more than 230 deaths (so far). ...

Jeannette Sutton
Oct 7, 2024


Improving an incomplete wildfire warning message
I write a lot about wildfire warnings; I do so because they honestly stand out as being some of the most frequently incomplete and...

Jeannette Sutton
Aug 9, 2024


Warning Location Information and Zones...
If you send or receive wildfire or hurricane alerts and warnings, you know that there has been a shift to the use of zones to highlight...

Jeannette Sutton
Jul 30, 2024


A complete message for a fast moving wildfire: 5-stars!
The wildfires that erupted in New Mexico this past June were fast moving and extremely dangerous. Having messages prepared ahead of time...

Jeannette Sutton
Jul 3, 2024


**Evacuation Warning** but for flash flood
(click image to enlarge) WEA issued in advance of #Hilary for the CA desert The folks at the Editor's Desk have written a LOT about the...

Jeannette Sutton
Aug 27, 2023


The JARGON style of wildfire messaging
Two WEAs issued for wildfire on 7/21/23 Clearly, alert and warning writers are neck deep in technical jargon when talking about IPAWS,...

Jeannette Sutton
Jul 21, 2023


Warning messages must include the hazard
WEA issued 7/10/2023 It's entirely possible that a local message recipient will know why they are advised to evacuate immediately. If...

Jeannette Sutton
Jul 12, 2023


Message Inconsistency
Wildfire WEA issued on 6/28/2023 In prior posts, we discussed the importance of message consistency. Most frequently, this is a topic...

Jeannette Sutton
Jun 27, 2023


Complete messages with room for improvement
WEAs issued 3/22/23 These messages are complete and include stylistic choices to increase attention (use of ALL CAPS for GO and EVACUATE)...

Jeannette Sutton
Mar 22, 2023


Warning has been lifted...but what does that mean?
WEA sent 10/16/2022 at 11:47am Back in January 2018, following the ICBM WEA that will go down in infamy, it became pretty clear that...

Jeannette Sutton
Oct 15, 2022
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