A Weather-Ready Nation: Are We There Yet?

As the impacts of extreme weather, water, and climate events continue to rise across the United States, the National Weather Service (NWS) has adopted a strategic vision of a Weather-Ready Nation that aims to help all citizens be ready, responsive, and resilient to extreme weather, water, and climate events. The original NWS Weather-Ready Nation Strategic Plan, drafted in 2011, stated that “By our 150th anniversary, we want America to be a Weather-Ready Nation.” As NWS celebrates its 150th anniversary in February, we look back at the progress made towards building a Weather-Ready Nation over the last decade. We also look forward, using the updated 2019-2022 NWS Weather-Ready Nation Strategic Plan released this year, to identify future challenges and opportunities. One of NWS’s key strategies is to expand the provision of Impact-Based Decision Support Services (IDSS), to connect forecasts and warnings to life- and property-saving decisions at federal, state, and local levels.

Early efforts to build a Weather-Ready Nation logic model that connects strategic outcomes to annual activities through intermediate results and strategies will be presented. The discussion will include possible societal outcomes that describe a Weather-Ready Nation, how the weather, water, and climate Enterprise contributes to these outcomes, and metrics used to evaluate progress. We will also acknowledge and discuss the physical and socioeconomic factors that affect these societal outcomes, as well as strategic foci the NWS and the larger Enterprise can pursue over the next decade to mitigate these factors and achieve a Weather-Ready Nation.