Developing a Socioeconomic-Aware Winter Storm Scale for Erie County, New York

The Winter Storm Severity Index (WSSI) is a graphical product produced by the National Weather Service (NWS) to convey forecasted impacts relating to winter weather conditions (Semmens et al. 2023). The WSSI accounts for a range of forecasted winter conditions, including but not limited to snow amount, blowing snow, and snow load. Climatology, land use, and urban-area designation are also considered. However, the WSSI does not directly incorporate several non-weather factors, such as characteristics of population and housing, road networks, and critical infrastructure. The deadly Buffalo, NY Christmas Blizzard of 2022 brought about the need for more effective preparedness and communication ahead of highly impactful winter weather events.

While the WSSI is an excellent tool to inform the community about important winter weather conditions, an improvement upon the WSSI that incorporates a particular location’s geographic and socioeconomic details could further increase the utility of the index. The WSSI provides a great starting point for such an index due to its established history, climatology-based output, and assimilation of a wide scope of winter weather parameters. Funded by Erie County, New York, this project develops a Winter Storm Scale for the county that integrates numerous geographic and socioeconomic inputs and returns a value pertinent to a location’s risk for disruptions to life and property. The scale is calculated retroactively for a variety of large and small storms to assess its performance and establish benchmarks for future storms. This more comprehensive scale would give county leaders and emergency management a stronger ability to understand past storms and prepare for future storms.