Bill Karins, Meteorologist

No more crying wolf, no more the sky is falling. When a warning is issued for your area danger is in the air. The National Weather Service (NWS) has officially gone to a more precise system for issuing dangerous warnings. In the past, the warnings have been based on the county you live in. The previous system was good if you live in a small county, but out west some of the counties are the size of entire New England states. Often in the bigger counties, a severe thunderstorm warning would be issued and it wouldn’t even rain where you are. Very rarely would severe weather be expected across any entire county, so now the NWS is pinpointing the location of the expected severe weather conditions. Here is an example of the old county warnings compared to the new storm warnings. You can notice how much smaller the warning is on the right.

The old warnings would show entire counties.

This is how the new warnings will look.

The benefit of this new system will not be to people affected by storm but to the people not hit by the severe weather. In the past, a county with 100,000 people would go under a severe thunderstorm warning from a dangerous thunderstorm anywhere in the county, but now, only towns in the path of the storm will be warned. This will spare thousands of people from stopping their lives and preparing for a storm that was never going to head their way.

This change is mostly due to the enhanced technology of NEXRAD radar systems deployed throughout the country. This radar looks into the storms and tells the NWS forecasters how large the hail is, how strong the wind gusts are or where a tornado is located. These more precise warnings are a great addition to our forecasting technique. You may notice next spring that you don’t have as many warning as in the past, but you will also notice that when a warning is issued, get ready because the storms coming.