Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere

Threats in Motion: Exploring and Implementing Moving Weather Warnings (and Watches)

Ideally the average person would be able to pull out their phone, choose a location and time and get a solid idea of hazardous weather conditions for the “when and where” they chose. To a degree, this is currently the case, but there are some known gaps in updating hazard weather information as the user approaches “now”. Notably, in the case of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, the “outlook to watch” and the “watch to warning” time frames could benefit from improved information flow. FACETS aims to address these gaps through the use of probabilities and more continuous updating of location and timing. Probabilistic Hazards Information (PHI) and Threats In Motion (TIM) are two specific implementations of the FACETs paradigm developed for warning on severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. This talk will briefly touch on PHI but focus on TIM, its benefits of more equitable lead time, the variations of TIM and its operational path.