What's coming for your areas

A warning tells you something is happening. A watch, an outlook or a hurricane forecast tells you it probably will — and that lead time is the only time an emergency manager gets to stage people and supplies. What's coming lists every forecast product that covers the areas you monitor, so the question "what is coming for my county" has an answer on the dashboard, not only after the warning.

What it lists

• NWS watches — tornado, severe thunderstorm, flood and flash flood, winter storm and extreme cold, fire weather, extreme heat, high wind, and the tropical watches.
• SPC convective outlooks of Enhanced risk and above.
• The NHC 5-day forecast cone for any active hurricane, with its closest forecast position to you.

Every line is the forecaster's own product with its own expiry. Calchis makes no forecast of its own.

How a product is matched to your area

By its footprint, not its center: a watch covers your county if your county falls inside the counties the NWS named. A product whose footprint could not be drawn is shown as approx. when its center falls inside your area, and counted beneath the list otherwise, so a watch that exists is never silently missing.

Conditions that fire before anything happens

Forecast conditions on your Information Requirements list fire on these products, and only on these: a watch condition never fires on a warning, and a warning condition never fires on a watch. The decision a watch forces — staffing, staging, a heads-up to shelters — is not the decision a warning forces.