At 6:10 PM EDT on October 12, 2024, with No. 11 Notre Dame leading Stanford 42-7 entering the fourth quarter, the ACC officiating crew suspended play at Notre Dame Stadium after lightning was detected in the South Bend area. Spectators were directed to seek shelter in nearby campus buildings, the Joyce Center, DeBartolo Hall, or the Mendoza College of Business. Both teams returned to the field at 7:00 PM EDT and play resumed at 7:10 PM EDT, an even-hour total delay. This was the second NBC college football broadcast in a week delayed by lightning.
3 messages in sequence · 2 verified verbatim
Confirmed wording is transcribed character-for-character from a primary source. Use Verify this quote under each message to open that source in a new tab and compare the text yourself.
Some messages in this sequence are documented (their existence, timing, and channel are sourced) but their exact wording is not preserved in the public record. Those entries appear as placeholders; only confirmed text is displayed.
This message is documented at this point in the sequence, but its exact wording is not preserved in the public record. The public edition displays only confirmed alert text.
@NDFootball on X (verbatim)To check this alert, Claude (an AI) read it in full 25 separate times, independently. Each read decided whether the message answers each of the six questions and gave a short reason. A final reviewer then weighed all 25 and wrote the plain-English verdict you see when you open a row. The score (for example 22/25) is how many reads agreed; the 25 individual reads are tucked underneath if you want to check them.
Lightning is in the vicinity of Notre Dame Stadium. Please exit the stands and seek shelter immediately. Shelter is available in the stadium concourse or a nearby campus building.
Final assessment
Unanimous: no sender, agency, or branded alert system identifies who issued this message.
Who is sending the alert and who is responding. People act faster on a message from a clearly identifiable, credible sender, such as a named department, the police, or a branded alert system, than on an anonymous notice. A branded signature counts.
Final assessment
Unanimous: 'Lightning' is explicitly named as the hazard.
What the threat actually is. A complete warning names the specific danger, such as a shooter, a fire, a tornado, or a gas leak, rather than a vague emergency, because people decide what to do based on what they are facing.
Final assessment
Unanimous: 'Notre Dame Stadium' is specifically named.
Where the threat is. Saying whether danger is in a specific building, a part of campus, or area-wide lets people judge their own proximity and choose a safe direction. Without a where, a warning is hard to act on precisely.
Final assessment
Unanimous: the message instructs to 'exit the stands and seek shelter immediately.'
The protective action to take. A clear, specific instruction, such as shelter in place, evacuate, avoid the area, or run-hide-fight, drives faster and more correct protective behavior than describing the threat alone.
Final assessment
Majority (about 18 of 25) credited the word 'immediately' as conveying recency and urgency, even though no clock time or date is given; a meaningful minority felt this urgency word alone wasn't a real time marker.
When the message applies. A timestamp, the word now or immediately, or a phrase like until further notice tells the reader whether the danger is current and how quickly to act.
Final assessment
Unanimous: no stated potential harm or severity of the lightning threat is described.
What the hazard could do to the people in its path. Beyond naming the threat, a complete warning conveys its potential consequences or severity, such as that a tornado can level buildings or that a leak could be explosive, so recipients grasp how much danger they are in. Research on warning message content finds that a concrete impact statement helps people personalize their risk and act sooner.
Systematic AI judgments with visible reasoning, not human-validated codings.
About this analysisEvery claim on this page is meant to be checkable. Open the links below (and the Verify this quote control under each confirmed alert) to read the original university, news, or archive page yourself. Hostnames are shown so you can see where you are going; archived copies survive when live pages move or disappear. See also our methodology.
Campus Alert Archive. "University of Notre Dame: Severe storm, October 12, 2024." Incident of October 12, 2024. Added May 2026; last updated July 2026. https://campusalertarchive.com/case/notre-dame-stadium-stanford-lightning-delay-2024-10-12/
Alert text quoted on this page remains the work of the issuing institution; the archive is a secondary source.