Project Overview and Goals

During severe weather, the National Weather Service and local communities depend on each other for information about the weather. The National Weather Service provides vital weather information and forecasts for local emergency managers, and in exchange, we provide them with specific weather information and data about what is happening in our community.

Traditionally, this manual acquisition of local weather observations occurs during and after an event through interactions between the NWS field office and local data observation systems, spotter networks, cooperative observers, and local emergency managers. The NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory has designed the Local Data Acquisition and Dissemination (LDAD) system as a means to improve this exchange of data and to provide the data to local emergency managers in a quick and easy to understand format. This new weather prediction system is designed to complement the basic federal weather observing systems currently being used.

The National Weather Service depends on information from our local weather observation stations and stream and precipitation gages. LDAD provides a means to integrate our local weather information into the National Weather network of sensors for real time local weather information in the NWS field offices. The information is then disseminated and available to us for quick and effective weather guidance in the OEM.

This new information will significantly improve the forecasters' ability to observe and predict weather events. In turn, it will provide our OEM with timely information and enable us to notify the residents of our community in the event of impending danger from weather events.

Design Specifications

The LDAD systems acquires and integrates a diverse set of local meteorological and hydrological observations, performs quality control checks on the observations, and disseminates the advanced weather information in text and graphical images that are understandable and of benefit to the local emergency manager.

Information includes hydrological observations from urban flood control districts, road weather observing networks, information from urban air pollution monitoring systems, and wind shear alert systems. Emergency managers can view graphic overlays of both meteorological and geographical information in real time. For example, they would be able to view specific ranges such as lightning strikes over a particular housing development.

Partnerships

NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado
National Weather Service

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