A Comparison Between WarnGen System and Probabilistic Hazard Information System for Severe Weather Forecasting

Abstract

To increase the nation’s preparedness for severe weather, it is important to design effective ways to communicate severe weather information. This study reports an experiment conducted in the 2014 Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) comparing the deterministic severe weather warning system WarnGen, and a prototype Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) system. Six National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters used both systems to forecast severe hail events. With minimal training, the PHI system received similar levels of system usability and weather situation awareness rating as the WarnGen system. Meanwhile, the PHI system resulted in significantly less temporal stress for the forecaster and all forecasters preferred the prototype PHI system to the WarnGen system. Forecasters believed the PHI system allowed them to convey richer and better weather information to the public, which could result in better service overall.