a collection of photography, forecasts, blog posts, storm reports, and maps between a start and end date. Each storm event is given an impact rating, primary hazard, and short write up.

What is the difference between start, end, and key date?

Each storm is given a start, end, and key date. The key date is the date commonly associated with the event usually corresponding to the heaviest impact. For example a violent tornado or major blizzard. In otherwords the key date is what we often remember events by. The start and end refer to when the encompassing event occurred.

How are storm events used as tools?

Through analog time periods that contains one of the storm events. It is common practice to compare a future storm to one that has already happened.

How do you do that?

We store storm event information (records) in our database along with storm reports, blog posts, imported photography, forecasts, etc and we pull the information when the page is loaded.

Where else are storm events used on the website?

When a storm event reaches it's start date, a banner is displayed at the top of every page. When clicked you will either go to a predetermined link or the storm event page. From there you can click through to other areas of the website. Storm events have multiple uses.

What is the future goal of storm events?

To pull together a CIPS like analog service that aids in forecasting. We are exploring the possiblity of merging storm events with outlooks for a hybrid forecast format. We want to measure how storm impact changes over time.

Why not just use NWS storm summaries?

We do backfill historical events with NWS storm write ups. After 2017 we record storm events at a higher resolution (not just the big or notable ones) and use them as a tool. Storm events are often split across multiple NWS CWAs but our system is a single source. The event page is pre-existing and evolves in realtime as the storm unfolds. More depth of information.