Communicating Snow Squall Risk to Multilingual Audiences with Virtual Reality

Despite great improvements in forecasting accuracy and timeliness, weather remains a leading cause of accidents and roadway fatalities in the United States, particularly wintry conditions. Snow squalls stand out as a prominent factor leading to multiple-vehicle chain-reaction accidents on limited-access highways, due to their rapid onset and potential for whiteout conditions and flash freezes on roadways. As a result, the National Weather Service has instituted snow squall warnings in recent years, with the ability to trigger Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) messages if conditions warrant. Nevertheless, there is still limited public understanding of snow squalls, their associated warnings and WEA messages, and crucially an equity gap when translating relevant information into other languages, such as Spanish. Thus, it is imperative to better understand how snow squall WEA messages impact driver behaviors, along with the challenges presented by conflicting information from other sources such as roadway variable message signs, as well as language barriers. This presentation will describe the development of a snow squall virtual reality (VR) simulation, created to answer research questions related to snow squall messaging efficacy, in both English and Spanish. Preliminary results from in-person surveys in the Northeast US using the VR will also be shared, along with initial recommendations for meteorologists and local officials to consider when communicating risks associated with this unique weather hazard in multiple languages.