Frozen out! The NWS won’t issue these winter alerts anymore

AUSTIN (KXAN) — As some parts of the country feel their first chilly air of fall, the National Weather Service is consolidating their cold and freeze alerts to streamline the messaging.

What’s changing?

Weather alerts for extreme cold and freezing temperatures are being simplified. The new consolidation of watches, warnings and advisories took effect October 1 nationwide.

Cold weather alerts

There will no longer be ‘Wind Chill’ weather alerts, but the new Cold Advisory, Extreme Cold Watch or Extreme Cold Warning will factor in dangerous wind chills and dangerous air temperatures.

“These changes seek to clarify that cold can be dangerous with or without wind, addressing a common misconception that extreme cold is only tied to colder temperatures when there is wind,” the National Weather Service said.

What this means is that Cold Advisories will be issued for a lower severity of dangerous cold, but Extreme Cold Watches or Warnings will be issued for an expected higher severity of cold.

The exact criteria for these new advisories, watches and warnings will be geographically dependent.

Freezing weather alerts

Freeze and Hard Freeze watches and warnings will be consolidated into just Freeze Watch or Freeze Warning when temperatures are expected to drop to or below freezing. Usually these alerts continue to be issued until the first hard and widespread freeze of the colder months.

While mostly used for agricultural purposes, Hard Freeze Warnings have been used in Central Texas in the past to indicate when temperatures at night might be cold enough to freeze pipes etc. even long after the first widespread freeze of the season.

These new simplified warnings will still indicate whether the freeze will be a “hard freeze” or not in the specific messaging text that comes with the alert.

Types of freezes

While frost is possible whenever air temperatures drop below 36º you don’t get a freeze until you drop to 32º. A freeze is considered “light” if air temperatures drop to between 30-32º, but a freeze is “hard” if air temperatures drop into the 20s or colder.

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