PORTLAND, Ore. — The National Weather Service (NWS) has launched a new tool to help make its warning alerts more localized in the diverse Pacific Northwest climate.
Typically, NWS covers a large geographic area, but with the new system that launched last week, warnings and watches will be more detailed and take into account the microclimates seen in the Pacific Northwest.
“For the Portland metro area, we know that the eastside can get really impacted by east winds by the Columbia River Gorge, but they might not always get all the way into downtown Portland,” said Hannah Chandler-Cooley, lead meteorologist with the National Weather Service Portland office.
Anytime the region sees inclement weather, NWS will issue watches and warnings that help advise schools, transit agencies and businesses on whether to close or adjust plans.
“Our zones were pretty large, the Portland area ranged from the West Hills on the westside all the way east to Troutdale,” Chandler-Cooley said.
Now, the NWS is making changes to make the advisories more specific. Cooley said that the weather service took its forecasted zones and broke them down into smaller areas, making the new system a lot more detailed now.
“What we did was analyze all of the microclimates in our forecast area and decided what the new zone should be based on,” Cooley said.
Cooley added that before there were only 15 zones, now there are closer to 25 zones. With the broken-down zones, NWS will be able to alert each zone individually if needed for any inclement weather impacts.