Are traditional hazard-based weather warnings anticipating local impact?

Hazard-based weather warnings alert decision makers, responders, and the population about meteorological risks, yet often overlook data on vulnerability and exposure, relying instead on fixed or climatology-based thresholds. This raises questions about their effectiveness at higher resolutions, as weather impacts are ultimately determined by local characteristics. This work addresses this gap by providing the first quantitative and high-resolution assessment of how traditional heavy rain and wind gust warnings correlate with actual impacts, using emergency calls as an impact proxy. The study works at the municipal and hourly resolution across Catalonia, in northeastern Spain, over six years (from October 2018 to February 2025), analysing warnings from two meteorological agencies: the national (AEMET, part of the EU MeteoAlert programme) and regional (SMC). We first compare the spatial distribution of issued warnings and emergency calls, assessing how they align with the rain and wind climatology of the region. Following this, overall warning performance metrics are calculated assuming a real-time setting. Further experiments analyse other critical operational variables, such as lead-time and monthly patterns. Our results reveal that while traditional warnings can identify general impact zones, they are severely limited when considered at local scales due to a high number of false alarms, which can reduce their public use and trust. Based on these findings, we not only provide a solid evidence base on how current weather warnings relate to actual impacts, but also aim to inform and accelerate the transition from traditional, hazard-centric systems towards more actionable and precise impact-based warning systems.