[nws-changes] 20110328: Texas fire Fwd: ADMIN NOTICE NOUS41 KWBC

• To: nws-changes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: [nws-changes] 20110328: Texas fire Fwd: ADMIN NOTICE NOUS41 KWBC
• From: Linda Miller <lmiller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:24:05 -0600

-------- Original Message --------

366
NOUS41 KWBC 281824
PNSWSH

Service Change Notice 11-16
National Weather Service Headquarters Washington DC
224 PM EDT Mon Mar 28 2011

TO:       Subscribers:
          - Family of Services
          - NOAA Weather Wire Service
          - Emergency Managers Weather Information Network
          - NOAAPORT
          - Other NWS partners and NWS employees

FROM:     Eli Jacks
          Chief, Fire and Public Weather Services Branch

SUBJECT:  Implementation of Improved Fire and Public Weather
          Forecasts for Southeast Texas Effective August 4, 2011

Effective Thursday, August 4, 2011, at 100 pm Central Daylight
Time (CDT), 1800 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the NWS
Weather Forecast Office (WFO) in Lake Charles, Louisiana (LCH)
will reconfigure its current fire and public weather forecast
zones for Jasper (TXZ181) County and Newton (TXZ182) County in
southeast Texas.

This reconfiguration will provide better fire and public
forecast services by splitting each of these counties into
separate northern and southern forecast zones.  This change is
being made because of the large meteorological, climatological
and geographical differences from north to south.

The fire and public weather forecast zones for Jasper (TXZ181)
County will be split to form Northern Jasper (TXZ259) and
Southern Jasper (TXZ261). Newton (TXZ182) County will be
split to form Northern Newton (TXZ260) and Southern Newton
(TXZ262). This split will account for tropical cyclone, fire
weather and winter weather impacts that only affect one portion
of these counties and not the other.

These fire and public zone changes require users to take
appropriate action to receive the new zone products using the
Universal Generic Code (UGC) zone code format(Z) in Table 1.

TABLE 1: New Fire and Public Zone Configuration Identifiers

NEW FIRE/PUBLIC     UGC (Z)    EXISTING FIRE/PUBLIC     UGC (Z)
  ZONE NAME                         ZONE NAME
---------------     ------     --------------------     ------
NORTHERN JASPER     TXZ259         JASPER               TXZ181
SOUTHERN JASPER     TXZ261         JASPER               TXZ181
NORTHERN NEWTON     TXZ260         NEWTON               TXZ182
SOUTHERN NEWTON     TXZ262         NEWTON               TXZ182

Detail regarding why these fire and public zone changes are
being made, graphical depictions of the current and new fire and
public zones, and a table of WFO LCH affected products are
online at:

  http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lch/?n=jaspernewton_zonereconfig

Updated fire and public weather forecast zone shapefiles are
online at:

  www.weather.gov/geodata/catalog/wsom/html/pubzone.htm
and
  www.weather.gov/geodata/catalog/wsom/html/firezone.htm

For more information, please contact:

Andy Patrick                    Melinda Bailey
Meteorologist-in-Charge         Public/Marine Meteorologist
WFO Lake Charles                NWS Southern Region Headquarters
Lake Charles LA 70607           Fort Worth TX 76102
337-477-5285                    817-978-1100 X107
andy.patrick@xxxxxxxx           melinda.bailey@xxxxxxxx

National Service Change Notices are online at:

  http://www.weather.gov/os/notif.htm

$$
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