500K people in NE U.S. receive their first live winter weather product from Hazard Services

On January 26 around half a million people in southwestern New Hampshire received their first live Winter Weather Advisory from the Hazard Services software (see attached).

The GYZ (Portland/Gray, Maine) NWS office was one of a limited number that tested and evaluated new GSL Hazard Services Winter Weather Watch/Warning/Advisory (WWA) capabilities in real-time forecast operations.

Initially, the testing has been done in “practice mode” which allows forecasters to go through the motions of issuing WWAs without transmitting these products outside of the WFO. The workflows and products can be carefully examined for accuracy, efficiency, and overall readiness. Once the WFOs are confident the software is sound and ready for full-scale operations, those WFOs can then issue Winter Weather WWAs using Hazard Services in an official capacity with products being transmitted to the public, media, emergency managers, and all NWS partners.

This careful approach ensures a safe rollout of the capabilities through comprehensive testing and builds confidence that this critical application will be ready for nation-wide deployment to be completed in time for the winter of 2021-22.

Hazard Services has already been deployed to all of the NWS WFOs for operational issuance of hydrology-related WWAs for flooding events.