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1. Introduction
Weather impacts everyone, whether or not people notice. Impacts can be psychological and/or physiological, on both small and large scales. At the individual level, people often find their mood influenced by weather; may fear lightning, tornadoes, and the potential destruction wrought by these and other dangerous meteorological phenomena; account for the effects of heat and cold through clothing choice; ascribe mentalistic states (i.e., thoughts, feelings, and intentions) to weather; and seek to enjoy weather’s myriad forms of beauty. Beyond the individual, weather affects city, state, and national economies; regional and national infrastructures; transportation; politics; military decisions; and almost every aspect of modern society. Because of weather’s significant impact, the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) launched the Weather-Ready Nation (WRN) initiative in 2012. WRN endeavors to develop more effective methods of meteorological communication for dissemination to the general public and throughout the weather enterprise, and to increase both the quality and quantity of weather safety outreach efforts that help all people.
WRN-conscious meteorologists have taken steps toward greater inclusion in weather messaging for vulnerable populations (e.g., those with cognitive processing, hearing, or vision differences, and who are physically disabled). Color vision differences are now better accommodated (Bolton and Mogil 2018) and emergency managers typically work with those who are physically disabled and those who may be homeless (Reeb 2017). The NWS has considered the deaf and hard of hearing in lightning safety messaging since 2016 (National Weather Service 2016), and work (e.g., Sherman-Morris and Pechacek 2018) involving blind and low-vision populations is in its infancy. However, individual differences of a neurological nature (i.e., disabilities and conditions) have been difficult to incorporate into formal discussion.
One reason for this challenge is that no empirical weather–psychology work has considered people on the autism spectrum. Only hypotheses suggesting that autistic individuals might exhibit greater levels of physiological and psychological weather sensitivity when compared with nonautistic individuals have been put forward (Bolton et al. 2017). Hence, the overarching goal of this paper is to extend the integrated weather–psychology intersection via a three-study exploration, and discussion of relationships between weather salience and autism, in order to support and encourage future WRN efforts focused on neurologically diverse populations. We anticipate lessons learned from work in this area might also extend...