New Software, Hazard Services, successfully supports Charleston weather forecast office during Hurricane Helene
By Theresa Barosh | Feb. 2025
In September 2024, the deadliest hurricane to strike the mainland U.S. since Katrina made landfall in Florida before moving north. In preparation for such an event, researchers out of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere had put in years of software development engineering behind the scenes.
During Hurricane Helene, the weather forecast office in Charleston, South Carolina successfully tested software built in collaboration with CIRA researchers to issue 67 warnings, including 39 for tornadoes.
“Severe convective warnings are arguably the most important responsibility that National Weather Service weather forecast offices carry,” said Taylor Trogdon, a CIRA researcher. “For them to be able to issue a warning with our software expeditiously and confidently speaks volumes about the work done by this team.”
The NOAA Global Systems Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado led development of Convective Hazard Services in collaboration with the NWS, CIRES, CIRA, and other key partners. Researchers out of CIRES, representing a partnership between the University of Colorado Boulder and NOAA, commonly collaborate with CIRA researchers, similarly representing a NOAA partnership with Colorado State University.
Severe convective storms can result in large hail, lightning strikes and extreme rainfall, among other hazards. With both national and local offices, there is a quilt work of cover over the nation for specific threats and locations. National centers, like the National Hurricane Center, Storm Prediction Center, and Ocean Prediction Center, provide high-level expertise on a specific threat. Local weather forecast offices handle local products, like tornado warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings, and flash flood warnings.
“There’s a trickle down of information,” said Trogdon, whose expertise lies with the national centers. “It’s what a lot of people get into the Weather Service to be able to do: be the ones that are issuing those products. It’s truly lifesaving information.”
After a weather forecast office issues a warning, the information gets picked up by third party apps, such as FEMA, WeatherBug, Storm Shield and Storm Radar.
“Building a piece of software that is going to eventually be what takes over that workflow [of issuing warnings] was probably the biggest component to if this program was going to be a success,” said Trogdon. “So now that we’re here – the work’s not done, but a sigh of relief to be like, hey, it does work.”
Trogdon said that a component of implementing new technology is building trust.
“If a forecaster is issuing a tornado warning, they know that they can draw that Polygon, and it’s going to work. That information is going to get out the door very quickly,” said Trogdon. “To create another software platform that can take that efficiency, replicate it and build that trust with the forecaster, that’s a huge lift.”
Inspiration and Teamwork
CIRA researcher Emily Schlie began working on the Hazard Services software during the Pandemic. Her interest in storms began long before starting that work.
“When I was a little kid, I almost got struck by lightning, and then I was terrified of thunderstorms after that,” said Schlie. “I went to the library and checked out every single kid’s book on weather. I’ve stayed super hyper focused on it.”
Schlie went on to get degrees in Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology at Iowa State University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Schlie said she was excited for the opportunity when it came up a few years ago to lead work on the Storm Track Tool, which is directly replacing WarnGen within the Hazard Services software. The Storm Track Tool includes a series of upgrades, while maintaining user-interface similarities with WarnGen to ease adoption.
With the Storm Track Tool, a county can handle multiple hazards occurring simultaneously across the county. The new software allows forecasters to track multiple hazards, such as tornadoes which commonly occur nearby one another. With new features for precision, the software allows for accurate severe weather warnings and messaging.
“There’s been so many iterations of testing of this version of Hazard Services where forecasters have given us just tons of feedback about what they want and we’ve been incorporating that,” said Schlie. “We’re working with really experienced forecasters right now that have been doing this for a really long time and so they have a lot of institutional knowledge.”