CPC 2019 Forecasts of Climate Extremes in the Northern Plains

The Climate Prediction Center (CPC) produces probabilistic sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) outlooks from week two through seasonal. Given atmospheric chaos longer lead forecasts are generally characterized by lower skill and more uncertainty, i.e. they are less predictable. Therefore, the decisions made by stakeholders using forecasts of different leads are frequently qualitatively different and are also very dependent on their risk tolerance. Although rare, extreme temperature or precipitation events can have devastating consequences across a range of sectors including agriculture, energy, and water resources. In order to allow stakeholders to plan for and hopefully mitigate extreme events at longer leads, CPC has developed the Probabilistic Hazards Outlook, which forecasts the likelihood of extremes in temperature, precipitation, and winds from days 8 to 14. This product provides stakeholders with more temporal resolution than the CPC Temperature and Precipitation Outlooks thus allowing enhanced decision support services from CPC. In this presentation we will provide background on the Probabilistic Hazards Outlook including the underpinning tools and science. Next we will discuss several 2019 Northern Plains extreme events covering the forecasts from this product (and supporting tools), how well the forecasts verified, and how they were used by stakeholders.