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NWS Lessons, Changes In the days leading up to Sandy's landfall, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service (NWS) helped save lives by providing timely and accurate forecasts—critical information that prompted people to act. Yet even with this forecasting success, NWS understands there were many challenges and lessons to be learned. In the year since Sandy struck, it has begun to take a series of steps that will bring improvements to the way it operates. • Expanded criteria for watches/warnings to include post-tropical systems. NWS has broadened the definitions of hurricane and tropical storm watches and warnings to allow watches and warnings to be issued or remain in effect after a tropical cyclone becomes post-tropical. In addition, NWS will ensure a continuity of service by allowing the National Hurricane Center (NHC) to continue issuing advisories during the post-tropical stage. As a result, forecasters now have more flexibility to effectively communicate the threat posed by transitioning tropical systems. Sandy's forecast was remarkably accurate and under a similar situation in the future forecasters will be able to choose the best option to underscore the urgency involved. • Sandy Supplemental Improvements. Whizzing through 213 trillion calculations per second, newly upgraded NWS supercomputers now are more than twice as fast as they were during Sandy in processing sophisticated computer models to provide more accurate forecasts further out in time. This higher processing power allows NWS to implement an enhanced Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) model. With improved physics and a storm-tracking algorithm, the model has displayed up to a 15 percent improvement in both hurricane track and intensity forecasts, compared to last year's version of the model. The upgraded HWRF is also capable of processing real-time data collected from the inner core of a tropical sys- Complete Range of motoRs, ContRols and automation Hz Radio ContRols • • • • CompatiblewithallHzmotors Technologyrecognizedfor10+yearsof provenstrengthandreliability Worldrenownedrollingcodetechnology andencryptedprotection Operateindividualandgroupsof motorizedproducts www.simu.com © Copyright Somfy Systems, Inc 8/2013 IBS PREVIEW 2014 / STORM & SECURITY PROTECTION 21