Abstract
Providing sufficient lead time and reliable information to people at risk of a natural disaster is of utmost importance. Having people prepared prior to a storm and knowing what protective measures to take for their location can be challenging to communicate. Therefore, evaluating how we communicate these threats to the public and government personnel through visual representation has the potential of reducing loss of life and property. Hurricane Threats and Impacts (HTI) graphics are issued by the Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) for tropical cyclones and are focused on hazards like wind, rainfall, storm surge, and tornadoes (Millet et al, 2022). Building from what was learned in the hurricane hazard graphics it is then possible to produce reliable graphics across multiple hazards. The goal is to assist NOAA in advancing the forecast products to improve the communication of dynamic probabilistic threats and impacts for winter storms to reduce economic damages. The winter storm of interest is named by the Weather Channel as Elliott, and it occurred in late December 2022 (Erdman, 2022). The evolution of the storm is described for the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, and Northeast and the appropriate visual graphics were generated to improve communication. The forecast data used is accessed from the National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD) and the winter elements addressed in this study are snow and ice accumulation, cold temperature, wind speed, and wind chill. Based on the results of previous studies, decisions were made in the style and format of these graphics to lead to increased readability and accuracy in the interpretation of the hazard addressed. It was found that single-hue colors were convenient for quantitative values like snow and ice accumulation. Also, threat level values for each winter element differed based on the region of interest. Further research needs to be done to decide on the size and scope of regions for the chosen threat-level values for winter storms.