Aviation service enhancements across the National Weather Service Central Region

In 2010, Central Region expanded on aviation service enhancements as a part of an aviation services improvement initiative that is focused on three major United States airport Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) areas. The focus of this effort is to increase weather awareness in support of a more efficient National Airspace System (NAS). One of these areas is the Chicago, Illinois TRACON. To support this effort, numerous customer forums and outreach visits were conducted to identify specific user needs. Feedback from these discussions helped guide the development of a tactical decision aid capability. Fully automated tactical decision aids were created for both runway configuration (wind speed and direction) and thunderstorm impacts and categorized the hazards into impact levels. Future plans include additional enhancements to provide additional decision support tools for elements such as turbulence, icing, and compression winds plus the expansion of user-specific decision aids for additional TRACON areas in the upper Midwest and Plains.