Translating weather terms into more common language

Given recent weather-related tragedies - one being the stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair - I have been more cognizant of people's tendency to either misinterpret or ignore official weather forecast terms. Pondering this and wondering what may be done to alleviate the situation has occupied my background thoughts for several months now since a late-night conversation between chase vans (via CB radio) brought similar issues to light during the May 2011 Hokie Stormchase trip. There are no simple answers to the problem of translating official weather "geekspeak" into a more common vocabulary that the wider public will relate to, but one factor that may shed some light recently dawned on me: Meteorologists tend by nature and education to be "numbers oriented" while the average person is not, leading to very different understandings between the two groups of what the numbers mean.

As an example today's National Weather Service (NWS) forecast for the Fredericksburg VA region indicates a 30% chance of thunderstorms. That is a summation of the forecast solution spit out by the numerical models used by meteorologists, thus the official forecast and accompanying graphics depict that solution. As I see it the problem is that the average person doesn't always relate to the numbers represented by the probabilities and instead focuses on the thunderstorm portion of the forecast, either basing their weather-related concerns on the fact that there WILL be storms at their location or ignoring the forecast because they don't understand what the numbers mean. In point of fact here is the official definition of probability of precipitation lifted from the NWS glossary:
"The probability that precipitation will be reported at a certain location during a specified period of time." How helpful is that definition to a non-numbers person? Not very.

Possibly an even grimmer misinterpretation lies with the probabilities given along with official NWS severe weather forecasts. Here is today's tornado probability map from the Storm Prediction Center (SPC):
Note that a 5% tornado probability exists for northern Nebraska and southern South Dakota. What does that mean? Here's the explanation copied from the SPC graphic: "Probability of a tornado within 25 miles of a point."

Numerically that can also be interpreted that there is a 95% chance of NO tornadoes within 25 miles of a given point in those states, and if the average person seizes on that interpretation the odds are that they will ignore the potential threat. However context is crucial here in that a 5% probability is significant enough for storm chasers to pay attention to that area as a place to bag a tornado sighting. Even more importantly, a 5% tornado probability forecast for the Mid-Atlantic is a very significant number given that (a) tornadoes don't happen here as often as they do in Nebraska or South Dakota and (b) the population density is much greater, providing a higher probability of damage and injury if a tornado does occur here. Thus the value of providing a numerical probability without an accompanying translation into locally understood terms means the populace could very easily misinterpret or even ignore the forecast when they don't think in terms of numbers the way that meteorologists do.

Does this explain away the aforementioned tragedies? Of course not...but maybe it does behoove the forecasters - and even us amateur weather geeks - to provide the general public with a more broadly understood interpretation of the numbers spit out by the forecast models.