The National Weather Service Central Region will begin experimenting with new, modified Tornado Warnings and Severe Thunderstorm Warnings beginning today, April 1st. This will be an expansion of a smaller experiment that was confined to Kansas and Missouri in 2012.
Okay, I’ll cut to the chase. The Impact Based Warnings experimental product is to help better communicate weather threats within Severe Thunderstorm Warnings and Tornado Warnings. While the purpose and format of these warnings will remain, additional enhanced impact information will be included.
How will this project enhance current efforts?
1. Better communication of the most critical information
2. Easier and quicker to identify the most valuable information
3. Will enable you to prioritize warnings in your area of interest
4. Provides different levels of potential impact within the same product
5. A particular warning might highlight a storm that is particularly dangerous
6. Allows users and vendors to develop apps and tools for the public and broadcast meteorologists to better communicate areas of increased risk
7. Tags will enable the NWS to express a level of confidence of potential impacts
What’s the goal of this project? The primary goal of this project is to provide additional information through the warnings to assist in decision making, create a better public response, and meet the needs of communities in life-threatening events. This entire project and all of the effort put into it is in response to the devastating and deadly tornado season of 2011, specifically the EF-5 Joplin, Missouri tornado.
Who is in the Central Region? Who will be participating in this experiment? All of the Iowa National Weather Service offices will be included in this experiment. Here’s a graphic with all of those participating:
What will these changes look like? Refer to this graphic:
Are there some real examples that you can show me of these tags? Yes – see this page for examples from the 2012 severe weather season.
Portions from the NWS Central Region