Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri

... Maximum wind-hail size tag to be appended to severe thunderstorm
warnings...

Beginning March 1 2010... all NWS central region weather forecast
offices will be appending a tag line to severe thunderstorm warnings
/svr/... and follow-up severe weather statements /svs/.

The tag line is a concise code which identifies maximum hail size
and wind speed expected for a given warning. Inclusion of this
information at the end of these products represents an effort to
respond to partner requests from the emergency management community
as well as several societal impact groups.

For instance... one specific application concerns the activation of
emergency alert sirens. Local area sirens are typically alarmed for
tornadoes only. Decoding this tag line will facilitate the
capability for local area emergency managers to activate sirens for
particularly dangerous severe thunderstorm events when conditions
exceed user defined thresholds... say for winds greater than 90 mph
as an example.

The maximum wind-hail size tag line is an Experiment which will be
evaluated from March 1 2010 through October 1 2010. During this
period... we encourage comments or suggestions for improvement using
the electronic survey provided at the link below. Your feedback will
help US determine product usefulness... whether modifications are
needed... and whether this will become a permanent addition to our
warning format.

On-line customer feedback survey /use lower case/:
http://www.Weather.Gov/survey/NWS-survey.Php?Code=svr-wind-hail

A service description document for this Experiment is available
on-line at : http://products.Weather.Gov

A map showing affected offices is on-line at:
http://www.Weather.Gov/os/notification/resources/cr_wfos.Pdf

Additional questions or comments may be directed to:
Kim.Runk@noaa.Gov or jim.Keeney@noaa.Gov


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