(Wilmington, OH/Silver Spring, MD) – The National Weather Service has changed its weather messaging system.
The aim of the agency’s Hazardous Simplification initiative is to improve and evolve the alerting system.
Wind chill watches and warnings will now be called Extreme Cold Watches and Warnings.
Wind chill advisories have been renamed Cold Weather Advisory.
Hard Freeze Watches will now be known as a Freeze Watch, and Hard Freeze Warnings have been consolidated to a Freeze Warning.
The weather service says the idea behind the changes is to clarify that cold can be dangerous with or without wind while addressing a common misconception that extreme cold is only tied to colder temperatures when there is wind.
Dangerously cold weather can accompany or follow wintry precipitation, and the cold messaging can be overshadowed by the wintry precipitation.
The new terminology went into effect on October 1.
