NWSChat in the age of FACETs: The Future of the Integrated Warning Team

For over a decade, NWSChat has served as the primary means of real-time communication for the National Weather Service (NWS) with its Integrated Warning Team (IWT) partners. While NWSChat logs are automatically archived, NWSChat participation trends over the course of a severe weather event remained unexplored. This study provides a high-resolution look at NWSChat IWT partner participation on 20 May 2019, a high-risk convective event in which NWS Norman provided continuous dissemination of information to its IWT partners through NWSChat.

Such an analysis of specific IWT partner participation provides a unique glimpse at how the current NWSChat communication infrastructure would operate in the age of FACETs (Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats). FACETs is a next-generation approach to NWS watches/warnings that will deliver user-specific, probabilistic hazard information (PHI) for improved decision making. As research with severe convective PHI matures and approaches operational use, an outstanding question exists about how PHI and other new temporal gap-filling products will affect the dynamics of IWT communication. This study will provide an overview of NWSChat trends and participation in an environment in which a continuous flow of information was provided to IWT partners.