Northwest Iowa — Day to day, the weather changes almost constantly in northwest Iowa. But in the long-term, we basically know what to expect. However, the way we are alerted to changes in the weather might be changing, especially for winter weather.
The National Weather Service office in Sioux Falls issues forecasts and other products for our part of northwest Iowa. Their Warning Coordination Meteorologist, Peter Rogers tells us that NEXT winter — that is the winter of 2021 and 2022, we could be seeing something different. He says the administration at the federal level is talking about making some changes.
(as said:) “The National Weather Service as a national agency is re-evaluating the number of headline products that we issue… some of the things that like winter storm warnings, wind chill warnings, blizzard warnings and so on. We have a lot of different headlines and sometimes they can become confusing and so one of the things that they are considering… and this would not take effect — if it does — until next winter… so this winter is there’s nothing changed on that front, but by next winter, they may do some things in terms of consolidating especially some of the cold products “
He tells us what they’ve got in mind.
(as said:) “This applies to different parts of the country… but taking things like an extreme cold watch or wind chill watch consolidating that to an extreme cold watch… taking extreme cold warnings and wind chill warnings… consolidating those to an extreme cold warning and then also changing the name from a wind chill advisory to a cold-weather advisory. So they’re trying to simplify some of the products that we have out there and use common terminology to make it more easily understandable.”
So basically, they would be getting rid of the “wind chill” name in headline products, and combining those products that had the “wind chill” names into headlines that already exist, the “Extreme Cold Watch,” and “Extreme Cold Warning, and changing the name of “Wind Chill Advisory” to “Cold Weather Advisory.”
We asked Rogers what he thought of the proposed changes, and he told us that he thinks, “The idea of trying to simplify headlines into something more understandable by a broader subset of the general public is a good thing.”
