In the fall of 2001, the Weather Event Simulator (WES) system was distributed throughout the National Weather Service (NWS). One of the important applications of the WES is to provide a way to simulate warning operations, allowing forecasters to practice issuing watches and warnings using NWS operational software. The WES system consists of a low-cost PC running the Linux operating system and software with three main components: data simulation software, a Linux version of the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) Display 2-Dimensional (D2D) software, and data archiving software. Further development of the software package and deployment of upgraded hardware will result in a more robust and streamlined system allowing NWS offices to archive and playback both local events and events from across the country.

To facilitate the use of WES in NWS field offices, the Warning Decision Training Branch (WDTB) and Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education and Training (COMET) Branch continue to collaborate on delivering WES training. Teletraining sessions introducing the WES and the concepts of effective simulations were delivered NWS-wide. As a complement to the teletraining on effective simulations, WDTB developed a series of four simulation guides to illustrate a variety of effective simulations on cases from different parts of the country. Each guide contains learning objectives, simulation instructions, evaluation components, and support materials that can be tailored to the offices’ local training needs. COMET Branch developed additional cases and guides with NWS Weather Forecast Offices using the WDTB model. Both WDTB and COMET plan to continue making WES training an important component of their training programs.

Future enhancements to the software are planned to incorporate a new AWIPS build and simulator functionality. The latest developments of WES implementation will be incorporated into the paper and presented at the conference.