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- Tornado Watch vs. Tornado Warning: What’s the Difference?
Tornado Watch vs. Tornado Warning: What’s the Difference?
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Data-journalism dark explainer · 51 seconds · English
A 51-second data-journalism explainer: a tornado watch is a huge box around the weather, hours ahead; a warning is a small shape around one storm, with about ten minutes to act.
- The brief
- “Tornado watch vs. tornado warning: what’s the difference?”
- Style
- Data-journalism dark
- Length and frame
- 51 seconds · 16:9
- Made for
- Lessons and courses
- Also on
- YouTube
How it was made.
The whole brief was the question, worded the way people search for it. The director picked the style itself. It drew both alerts on one map, to scale, so the size of the warning next to the watch tells the story.
It ends on what to do: lowest floor, now. It cost $4.33 of model spend to make.
Every film on explain.film is made the same way: one sentence in, a storyboard you approve, then the director paints, voices, scores and animates it, and a critic model grades the cut before you see it.
Transcript
- Tornado watch, tornado warning.
- They sound alike, but one gives you hours, and the other gives you minutes.
- A watch is about the sky: forecasters see the ingredients for tornadoes coming together, so they draw a huge box, often thirty thousand square miles, for six hours or more.
- A warning is about one storm.
- Radar catches it spinning, or someone sees it, so your local office draws a small shape along its path.
- It lasts about half an hour, and on average gives you ten minutes.
- So, a big box: get ready.
- A small shape over you: take shelter, lowest floor, now.
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