Talk:Severe weather terminology (United States)

Colors of the Hazardous weather statements table
Ouch. The orange and yellow scheme is rather severe. Since there has been some conflict about reverting this change, I'm asking Tawker or 24.214.57.91 to revert back to the original color scheme. -- Kenheut 23:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Scope of this article
This article was developed to establish a more comprehensive and consistent article to replace several short stubs. This article is about how the U.S. National Weather service defines such terms within the United States, i.e., what does the NWS mean when the NWS issues a tornado warning. It is recommended that other definitions be clearly differentiated from the NWS definitions or placed in separate articles as appropriate. Please cite sources for all NWS terms. Thanks. --Wyatts 16:01, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Consolidation
Nearly all the articles in this category are very short, definition-type articles that do not seem to warrant separate articles in an encyclopedia. It might be better to expand the article on Severe weather terminology to include all of these terms/definitions. That would result in a single, substantial encyclopedia article, rather than a lot of short definition-type articles. Each existing article would then need to be redirected to the main article.

Right now, the Severe weather terminology article does not contain everything and needs some clean up but could easily be expanded/improved.

Comments on this suggestion would be appreciated. If there are no objections in the next week or so, I will go ahead and do the merge. --Wyatts 16:01, 13 August 2005 (UTC) (forgot to sign earlier)

I'm confused with the severe local storms. Many of these seem redundant. If there is a reason they are there we should have an intro to explain what that section is for. -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 01:35, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Fujita Scale
Can someone please note the upcoming update to the Fujita Scale (F-Scale) to the Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF-Scale) which goes into effect February of 2007?

Beaufort Scale
A table is given, but no Beaufort numbers, nor how they relate to small-craft advisories and warnings. Cwolfsheep 20:10, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Fujita Scales
I will soon add the EF-scale to the page. The old F-scale also needs some touchups. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stormyboiler (talk • contribs) 02:15, 3 March 2007 (UTC). Stormyboiler 02:15, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Snow shower
I merged in the defintion of Snow shower from the Snow shower article, which I've now redirected here. I added it to the list of general weather conditions as defined by the NWS, even though the definition I added was not from the nws. Because it wasn't, I stuck it at the bottom of the list, out of alphabetic order. This ought to be fixed up. I tried looking at the nws website to find their definition of this term, but couldn't find it. Such is life. --Xyzzyplugh 14:22, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

It is really frustrating to be looking for a definition of snow shower, have it redirect here, and then have that NOT on the page. Pages should not redirect to pages that don't have (any more) anything to do with the redirect!

I added the NWS defeniton of Snow shower. A Snow shower is actually a mod-heavy, brief, localized snowfall.Stormyboiler 00:14, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * What happened to this definition? It's not here now... 63.87.189.17 (talk) 03:39, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Need new article to address products
I find this article a bit too expansive given the title "Severe weather terminology". I would not expect to see a listing and descriptions of every event-driven National Weather Service product in an article titled severe weather terminology. I suggest a new article titled "National Weather Service products" to handle descriptions of every product they issue. That way we can divert the piecemeal product listing from this article to that article with a Main Article link. It would also help clean up the article on NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards since they are also reinventing the wheel with a bunch of product descriptions.

Secondly, I see various references to non-United States products and standards in this article, even though it has "United States" in the title. Why is that in here? Should the title be more broad and not mention "United States" if we want to discuss the various standards in other countries? JLamb 03:51, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I was wondering this as well. The aritcle is titled Severe weather terminology (United States), but:


 * What does Sky condition or Precipitation probabilities have to do with severe weather?


 * Same goes for many of the listings in General weather terms as defined by the NWS


 * What does the TORRO tornado intensity scale have to do with the United States? Also, does the Beaufort wind scale used by the United States at all? (I have no idea since I live nowhere near an ocean)


 * The hail section, though interesting, seems to belong more in the Hail article than this one (unless we only list the .75 in or larger hail}

I would suggest that we either eliminate these sections, or else rename the article to something that better describes with it's about. I actually think this article is off to a very good start, and with some referencing and clarification on the above items would possibly be a good Featured List candidate. Gopher backer 16:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Generic overhaul work
Randomly found the Severe weather project... saw that this page needs work but a lot of the sub-articles are quite good.

Included fixes would need to be:

--Types of hazards/advisories. Some no longer exist, and there are a handful of new ones

--Definitions of many have changed

--Usage of some types are functionally obsolete and are used by only a few NWS offices

--Hail size and scaling received a recent official definition overhaul

--SSHS has some updated tidbits as of 2009 but no numerical wind changes

In a few other cases... I know it's important to have official definitions, particularly to define severe thunderstorm and tornado watches, but since those have their own separate and precise articles it might be good to simplify the terms a little on the main terminology page.

For some of the hazards, it's already been updated on their separate page that their definition or use is different... should be reflected on the front page. Might need to form a category of obsolete terms after all cleaned up(?)

Datheisen (talk) 10:47, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Redundancy
It seems like there is a lot of redundency in this article. Some terms are listed 2 or 3 times. Kyle1081 (talk) 22:54, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Title Capitalization

 * I don't understand why many of the pages dedicated to different National Weather Service warnings do not have capital letters in all words. For example, the National Weather Service has an Extreme Cold Warning, but the article is located at Extreme cold warning. This is not right; the words extreme and cold are not just adjectives in this situation, but are actually part of the name of the warning. The warnings in this specific example may be warnings for extremely cold temperatures, but the actual warning is named Extreme Cold Warning, and so by this logic, the article should be located there. This is but one example. The same applies to many other NWS advisories, watches, and warnings, from Severe Thunderstorm Warnings to Tropical Storm Watches to Flash Flood Warnings and beyond, as seen here: (Note: There may be some exceptions, but they are definitely in the minority)


 * Any replies would be appreciated. Dustin   talk  03:32, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

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Historical "Severe Thunderstorm Warning" changes
this might be useful ... https://web.archive.org/web/20170524070317/http://ksn.com/2017/05/23/meteorologist-dave-freeman-helped-change-severe-warning-criteria/ • Sbmeirow  •  Talk  • 07:05, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Consolidation of several NWS alert types
The National Weather Service is in the process of consolidating some of the winter weather and flood headlines that they issue. Notably, Blizzard Watch and Lake Effect Snow Watch are being merged into Winter Storm Watch, Freezing Rain Advisory and Lake Effect Snow Warning are being merged into Winter Storm Warning. Some WFOs are also merging Lake Effect Snow Warning into Winter Storm Warning. Also in early 2018, changes to some types of flood headlines are expected as well. My changes to several WP articles including this one reflects these changes. -- PurpleDiana (talk)

If the information on this URL (https://www.weather.gov/help-map) is still up to date, there are actually 118 unique National Weather Service (NWS) hazards as of March 24, 2021 that include various severe weather warnings, watches, advisories and statements organized by color sample for graphical map overlay. --TriWX (talk) 00:01, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Article needs major overhaul
The text is full of some of the most egregious errors possible from beginning to end. Realize that saying this might not be popular, but the information has got to be updated as soon as possible to represent what is current. The agencies that make up our meteorological backbone have went through extensive reformation over the past few years while some addition is still ongoing or scheduled in the near future. This especially goes for the National Weather Service (NWS). Don't think that I am being overly critical though. It has taken me years of research to comb through the maze of information and still available resources to determine what is actually still relevant and what is at this point no longer active or functional for example. Anyone up for helping my begin this immense project? --TriWX (talk) 00:01, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Excessive Rainfall Outlooks?
They need to be added. Not mentioned anywhere on this article or the WPC article. 2601:5C5:4201:68B0:2868:6157:97AA:EFA3 (talk) 19:50, 6 May 2024 (UTC)