How Hurricane Hunters Gather Data

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It wasn’t hard for city officials in Oldsmar, Florida, to see that most of the town’s 15,000 people didn’t leave during a mandatory evacuation for Hurricane Ian last year.

People brushing their teeth, flushing their toilets and taking showers helped prove it even further.

“Since the city has its own reverse osmosis water treatment plant, we have the ability to evaluate the overall water use for the city as a whole,” City Manager Felicia Donnelly told weather.com in a recent email.

A city employee decided to look at those numbers during the time of the Ian evacuation. They found that overall water use dropped by only 20%, indicating that most residents ignored the authorities.

Ian Was Headed Straight For Them

Oldsmar sits on the northwest tip of Tampa Bay.

“Ian's forecast was difficult and shifted back and forth along the Florida Gulf Coast as it moved out of the Caribbean,” weather.com senior meteorologist Dina Knightly said. “At one point, the forecast had Oldsmar right in the crosshairs of a strong landfalling hurricane.”

The city was included in an evacuation order issued by Pinellas County on Sept. 26. While such orders are described as “mandatory,” there is no penalty for staying and people are not forced to leave their homes.

“In the end, Ian rapidly intensified before making landfall just north of Fort Myers but flooding reached far beyond the center of the storm,” Knightly said.

The deaths of at least 146 people were attributed to the storm. Many were people who didn’t evacuate and then drowned in their homes or were swept away when trying to escape.

Oldsmar Isn’t Alone

A recent survey from the American Automobile Association, known as AAA, found that one in four Floridians said they would not evacuate for a hurricane even if warned to do so.

Some of the top reasons people said they’d stay, according to the survey: Not knowing what do with pets; financial issues, such as the price of gas or hotels; not knowing where to go; a desire to protect their property; and believing a storm will turn away.

"People are going back and forth, they're taking in a lot of information," Samantha Montano, a psychologist who specializes in emergency management and disasters, told weather.com in a previous interview. "They're thinking about what that information means, how that affects their family, whether they trust where that information is coming from."

What Oldsmar Is Doing With The Data

The city has upped its hurricane education programs for local residents and businesses, Donnelly said. If Oldsmar comes under another mandatory evacuation order, water usage data will be used to measure how effective that education is.

“The county takes many factors under great consideration before mandatory evacuation orders are issued, and I can’t express enough the importance of compliance to protect the lives of our community members,” Donnelly said.

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Weather.com reporter Jan Childs covers breaking news and features related to weather, space, climate change, the environment and everything in between.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.