National Weather Service Plans to Zone Its Forecasts

Home gardeners worried about frost, commuters concerned about rain and the legions of folks everywhere who just like to know about the weather will get a bonus from the National Weather Service this fall.

Beginning Oct. 1 for much of the country, the agency will replace the forecasts for broad areas with predictions for each county, similar to those provided by private forecasters.

A project that features improved radar imaging and automated data collection allows the weather service to go from 800 forecast zones to 3,060, even as the weather service cuts back on staff.

“We’re getting higher-resolution information,” Robert C. Landis, deputy assistant administrator for operations, said in a telephone interview from Washington. “We need to pass it on to people and not have them have to worry about something going on 60 or 70 miles away.”

Under the old system, several counties made up one zone, diluting the accuracy of the forecast. The new forecasts will approach the detail of those from private forecasters, such as Accu-Weather of State College and Weather Services Corp. of Bedford, Mass., but not match it.

Newspapers and television stations in metropolitan areas and the larger radio stations often use the private companies or in-house meteorologists, but hundreds of other newspapers and small radio stations rely on the weather service.

The benefits will be seen mostly by the national cable station The Weather Channel and local broadcasters who rely on the government’s service for all weather information, said Paul Clark, the manager of computer operations for the Weather Services Corp.

Landis said the new service will not impinge on two prime areas the private firms target--businesses and government.

“We’re not providing a specific forecast for a specific user, or telling a user specifically how it will affect their operations,” Landis said. “We’re not going to get into that business.”

The technology behind the more detailed forecasts involves radar systems that can analyze the atmosphere for moisture content even if no showers are falling. It also has automatic data collection from weather stations and a computer that can “read” conditions from a large area and make forecasts automatically.

The modernization comes as the agency cuts back from 300 offices to 115.

Not all areas of the country will have the new service.

“In the West, we still have a fair number of counties where we don’t have an observation,” Landis said. “We do require at least one observation in the forecast area. Otherwise, we could make a forecast and not even know how we were doing.”