SAN ANGELO, TX — The National Weather Service of San Angelo/Abilene is responsible for issuing watches, warnings and advisories for their forecast zones. In fact, there are more than 120 NWS products that can be issued, says Dr. Steve Lyons, meteorologist in charge of this forecast office.
Dr. Lyons and his colleagues believe that is too many. Too often these products are lost on residents and that could mean not receiving the proper safety information. So, scientists are asking for your input. The survey asks for you to steer forecasters in the right direction on the products they issue.
Take the survey, here.
Here is part of their considerations:
As part of the ongoing Hazard Simplification Project, the National Weather Service (NWS) is proposing to reduce the number of (consolidate) and reformat its hazard messages (products) for visibility, extreme temperature and wind.
Consolidation Portion of Proposal: First, we propose a consolidation of five individual visibility Advisory products (Dense Smoke, Dense Fog, Freezing Fog, Ashfall, Blowing Dust) into a single "Visibility Advisory" product. In addition, we propose consolidating and/or renaming cold temperature-related products into one Watch, one Advisory, and one Warning, as follows:
1) "Extreme Cold Watch" and "Wind Chill Watch" would be consolidated into a new product called "Cold Weather Watch".
2) "Extreme Cold Warning" and "Wind Chill Warning" would be consolidated into a new product called "Cold Weather Warning".
3) "Wind Chill Advisory" would be renamed as "Cold Weather Advisory".
We also propose removing "High" from the "High Wind Watch" and "High Wind Warning" products, and removing "Excessive" from the "Excessive Heat Watch" and "Excessive Heat Warning" products.