A little after 2:00 this afternoon, tornado sirens went off downtown. I was in a meeting near the top of the Federal Building, and while many of us started shifting around uneasily in our seats, the meeting went on without comment. Finally, someone came in and announced "(the director) would like to remind you that we are at the top of a glass building and you need to go down to the ground floor and away from the windows."

I'm not sure what feeling was greater: relief at being told to actually abide by safety policies or annoyance at the interruption of the meeting. We could have reconvened the meeting in the hallway downstairs, but excitement makes people social. We broke into amiable clusters to chat. The Blackberry enclave was the largest group, all peering down toward their palms like soothsayers, reading the weather radar images thereon and describing the storm's movement from Franklin to the airport. Others were texting friends madly asking what was going on in the outside world.

Now, I know that if we went to our basements every time a tornado watch was announced this week, we'd never get out. But it seems a little odd to ignore the urgency of sirens at the same time we're talking ourselves into a frenzy with every bad weather announcement. My guess is that the people who set the sirens wailing have better information than friend Patty waiting it out in the Art Bar in Riverwest.

When it comes to weather, at least, more data doesn't seem to make us smarter.