NWS National Seasonal Safety Campaign: Preparing the public for hazardous weather year-round

NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) wants you to be prepared for hazardous weather year-round. The aim of the National Seasonal Safety Campaign is to build a Weather-Ready Nation, one that is prepared for extreme weather, water, and climate events.

Each campaign includes seasonal resources that provide information that is vital to keeping you and your loved ones safe. These materials include websites, articles, social media, infographics, videos and other content around the weather hazards most common during the current season.

ARATS Members are qualified storm spotters, Members have Weather ID numbers and work under the direction of the Buffalo Weather Service. Members can be activated for Severe Weather outbreaks for the purpose of gathering information and reporting weather conditions back to the Weather Service Coordinators, some of ARATS members are also CoCoRaHS (Community Collaborative Rain, Hall & Snow Network) Spoters/Reporters for the Weather Service.

Members take daily 24 hour precipitation reports from their rain gauge cylinder, Rain in summer and Snow in winter then log the reports in on the CoCoRaHS page. These reports help the weather service for updating the public on current conditions in their area, as well as providing local TV stations with up to the minute forecasting.

A New, More Timely Approach to Weather Preparedness

NWS chose to replace national safety awareness weeks with a year-round approach for a simple reason: bad weather happens year-round. For example, severe weather can occur anytime - it does not wait for a single week in March. With the National Seasonal Safety Campaign, we seek to inform the public about seasonal weather hazards during the time they are most common. This is a 365-day a year effort and can’t be confined to a single week.

Partner Support

While NWS will no longer lead national weather awareness/preparedness weeks (with the exception of Hurricane Preparedness Week), it will continue to support pre-existing awareness/preparedness weeks such as Rip Current Awareness Week and Lightning Safety Awareness Week.

In addition, NWS actively works with partners such as FEMA to provide consistent messaging on weather preparedness. Together with Weather-Ready Nation Ambassadors, NWS strives to communicate the importance of being prepared for extreme weather. We can’t do it alone! It takes all of us, working together, to build a Weather-Ready Nation.