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POLYGON WEATHER WARNINGS – A NEW APPROACH FOR THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE

POLYGON WEATHER WARNINGS – A NEW APPROACH FOR THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE . Ken Waters National Weather Service, Honolulu HI *, J. M. Coyne, P. L. Wolf, J. T. Schaefer, J. M. Looney, S. Naglic, B. W. MacAloney II, M. A. Tew, J. Lorens, R. J. Okulski, and N. O. Schwein Jan 12, 2005

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POLYGON WEATHER WARNINGS – A NEW APPROACH FOR THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE

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  1. POLYGON WEATHER WARNINGS – A NEW APPROACH FOR THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE Ken Waters National Weather Service, Honolulu HI *, J. M. Coyne, P. L. Wolf, J. T. Schaefer, J. M. Looney, S. Naglic, B. W. MacAloney II, M. A. Tew, J. Lorens, R. J. Okulski, and N. O. Schwein Jan 12, 2005 AMS – San Diego

  2. Background • National Weather Service issues four types of short-fused warnings: • Tornado Warnings (TOR) • Severe Thunderstorm Warnings (SVR) • Flash Flood Warnings (FFW) • Special Marine Warnings (SMW) • Issued normally for one county at a time • Can lead to a large false-alarm area, especially in the case of large or irregular-sized counties • Verification has been strictly county-based • Legacy dissemination methods all tied to counties: • NOAA All-Hazards/Weather Radio • Uses SAME alert code based on counties • Internet displays – again, based on counties Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  3. WARNGEN • Allows forecaster to graphically highlight the area of greatest threat • Creates a template text product for the warning, including proper headers, issue/expiration times, county UGC codes • ALSO: includes latitude/longitude vertex points for the pathcast, or polygon warning --- LITTLE USED by NWS, partners, and public Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  4. Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  5. NWS Polygon Team formed in 2004 • Purpose: Encourage warnings by polygon rather than county-based • Test will be run in 2005 with some NWS forecast offices • De-emphasis on county borders • Focus on location of severe threat • Test alternate measures of verification that are polygon-based • Will open the door for dissemination using current technologies (e.g., cell phones, pagers, GPS-enabled devices) Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  6. Using GIS with Polygon Warnings • Polygon vertices well-suited to include in GIS • Mechanism was established to strip off the lat-long polygon information, database the polygons, and create real-time GIS shapefiles • Using only open source (“freeware”) software • Code written in Perl • Polygon values formatted in ESRI “gen” format • Use “gen2shp” and “txt2dbf” packages Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  7. And now, some examples, using 2004 warnings Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  8. Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  9. Tornado Warnings Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  10. Tornado Warnings Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  11. Severe Thunderstorm Warnings Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  12. Severe Thunderstorm Warnings Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  13. Tendency to align warnings to county borders continued in 2004 Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  14. Flash Flood Warnings Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  15. Special Marine Warnings Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

  16. Warning Shapefiles • Updated every minute for TOR, SVR, FFW, SMW, as well as SPC watches • Available at: • http://www.prh.noaa.gov/hq/regsci/gis Ken Waters Regional Scientist NWS Pacific Region Honolulu, Hawaii Ken.waters@noaa.gov (808) 532-6413 Ken Waters, NWS Pacific Region

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