By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
The Central Kansas autumn has already featured temperatures below the freezing mark. More can be expected as the cold season draws closer. The National Weather Service works across all seasons, but Barton County Emergency Management Director Sean Kelly said the service has changed some things for this fall and winter.
"They've kind of consolidated some of their verbiage when it comes to watches, warnings, advisories," he said. "You used to see extreme cold watch, wind chill watch. Those are going to turn into extreme cold watch. They're bringing those together. They kind of still have the same parameters but we're just trying to get rid of too many advisory/watch/warnings going out when we can just simplify it."
The effort is part of the Hazard Simplification initiative, which integrates public and partner engagements and social science to improve the services's alert system. Cold weather alerts, including those with wind chill, will be consolidated into extreme cold alerts. Watches are when conditions are possible and warnings are when cold weather conditions are expected. Hard freeze watches and warnings have simply been named freeze watches or warnings.
"Those took effect Oct. 1," Kelly said. "They did some trial and error, some peer review stuff with us, to make sure it sounded good and we thought it was going to be all right. That's what they've gone with."
The consolidation of phrases will help streamline the forecast process and make language universal across the United States. Follow Barton County Emergency Management on Facebook for important weather updates.