Transformation of the Tropical Cyclone Warning Program by the National Weather Service

NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS) will start a comprehensive transformation of the tropical cyclone watch/warning program by the 2015 hurricane season. It will begin with a new Storm Surge Watch and Storm Surge Warning product disseminated through a Tropical Cyclone VTEC (TCV)-like product from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) with a local version also coming from the impacted Weather Forecast Offices (WFO). The new WFO TCV will be largely automated and include all local watches and warnings and meteorological information in a one zone-one segment basis from WFO gridded databases using an industry-standard format suitable for portable devices and software applications (web based and otherwise) enabling faster dissemination of tropical hazard information to the public. It will replace the Hurricane Local Statement (HLS) as the WFO tropical cyclone watch/warning product. Combined, the new NHC and WFO TCV-like products will open the door for a collaborative watch/warning process that will be more responsive to user needs.

The new HLS product will become a discussion preparedness product conveying a succinct message on local impacts, tailored by forecaster input and reformatted based on social science research. The new HLS will be complementary to the tropical cyclone impact graphics issued by coastal offices highlighting the WFO paradigm shift from mostly text products to more multimedia graphics. This presentation will describe the comprehensive transformation of the tropical watch/warning program over the next several years.