Author: HURREVAC Support

Here’s a summary of changes and improvements implemented by the HURREVAC team in recent weeks. Behavior of exercise storms and simulated storms Exercise and simulated storms now show the first (or earliest) advisory when initially loaded onto the tracking map. This helps make training and exercises more realistic by avoiding a premature reveal of the scenario. Active storms continue to load to the most recent advisory. Archived storms also load to the most recent advisory, which is usually the final one issued. When building a simulated storm, toggle forward through advisories as you go through each of the steps to check the track and product generation. Storm Simulator now prohibits importing an active storm to use as the basis of a track. Storm Simulator is only intended for creating exercises. During active storms, the official NHC, CPHC, or JTWC products are recommended for emergency management decisions. Improved geography for the western Pacific and U.S. territories The HURREVAC team made numerous improvements to the program’s geographic databases to provide more consistent report functionality for U.S. territories and the NWS area of responsibility in the Pacific region. This effort primarily involved islands defined as forecast points for NWS Guam throughout the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Republic of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The most significant change is that the previous “Western Pacific” or “WP” grouping used for HURREVAC’s timeline actions and reports was broken out to define all the territories and nations listed above. The improved labeling means that any timeline actions created with the former WP reference are no longer functional. Users who had previously created custom timeline actions within those areas should delete the old actions and create them again. Previous timeline action and report listings for Sorol and Ujelang Atoll were discontinued. This project did not affect the underlying forecast products ingested by the program. Data availability varies by region and forecast agency, which is spelled out in the User Guide. But users may notice that some reports now generate results for Pacific locations that were not previously included. The classic basemap was also enhanced with a higher-resolution depiction of the islands. Some database enhancements were also implemented for American Samoa, Wake Island, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A base location can now be established in all U.S. territories. This lets users quickly filter multi-location reports to find the most relevant local results. NWS references in resources tab and base location HURREVAC users can now quickly reference the areas served by local National Weather Service offices. The new NWS County Warning Areas layer shows boundaries and labels on the tracking map. It is listed in the Resources tab alongside other useful boundaries like counties, FEMA regions, and USACE districts. Reminder: you can use the Quick Layers tool to adjust the opacity and display order of boundaries with respect to each other, and the weather data you have plotted on the map. When setting a base location, the NWS office serving that area is now listed with the other data in the User Preferences. Click the link to open the office’s home page in a new browser tab. The new NWS West/South Pacific AOR layer plots simple outlines of the areas of responsibility for WFO Guam within the Western Pacific basin and WSO Pago Pago in the South Pacific.

Here’s a summary of improvements made by the HURREVAC development team during late 2023 and early 2024. New way to manage simulated storms Managing your list of simulated storms in the Storms tab no longer requires a right-click. To add a simulated storm, left-click the three dot menu icon to the right of the folder heading. The options to remove, share, and edit a particular simulated storm can be accessed with a left-click on the three dot menu icon next to that storm’s name. Get a county-based report by right-clicking A county-based Wind Timing Report for a Location can now be generated from a right-click. The context menu contains a direct link to create a report based on the boundaries of the county (or U.S. county equivalent) in which the click was made. This link is located below the option to generate a report for the specific coordinates that were clicked. The image below shows an example for Suffolk County, NY. Previously, the only way to generate a county-based report was by clicking on the name of a locality listed in the multi-location wind timing reports. That method is still available. Error cone size for archived storms The Potential Track Area (Error Cone) now shows historically accurate dimensions for archived storms. Previously, the cones for all storms in the program were plotted using the annually-updated definitions for the current season. Average track errors have diminished over time, so cones for current storms are smaller than they were in past decades. When working with an archived storm, HURREVAC now applies the error statistics from its year of occurrence to show the cone as it would have appeared in graphical products issued at the time. The program also factors in how those cone definitions vary by ocean basin and issuing agency. HURREVAC will continue to plot cones for exercise storms and simulated storms with the current (2023) definitions, regardless of when the storm was created or the date of the scenario. Product changes for the 2024 season, including any changes to error cone dimensions, are expected to be implemented later this spring. Learn more about these tools in the HURREVAC User Guide (login required).

The latest upgrade to Points of Interest gives HURREVAC users more options for storing and sharing their information. The POI Import and Export functions now support GeoJSON files. POIs can still be exported to and imported from properly-formatted Excel (.xlsx) spreadsheets. POI Style Settings can now be imported and exported, too. To share the custom look of your POI with another HURREVAC user, the style settings can be downloaded and uploaded via a JSON file. Learn more in the updated Points of Interest topic of the user guide.

The HURREVAC team deployed several upgrades and changes on August 15. These enhancements are mainly focused on the integration of Points of Interest with evacuation timing tools. One general improvement involves the resizing of reports in the right Side Panel. Reports have variable widths, so the panel now automatically expands to show all columns and data. Timeline Actions NEW: Timeline actions can be created for a point of interest, rather than a county (or parish) at large. Read the timeline actions page of the HURREVAC user guide for more details (login required). CHANGE: Increased character limit on Timeline Item Abbreviation from 10 to 20 characters CHANGE: Time offset is only in relation to the Arrival of Tropical-Storm-Force Winds (34 kt / 39 mph). Previous nonoperational prompts for arrival of strong tropical-storm-force winds (50 kt / 58 mph) and closest approach of the eye were removed. Actions that were previously saved using those factors may still be listed under Saved Timelines, but are not applied elsewhere in the program. CHANGE: Improved sorting functionality of Saved Timelines list. A Type column was added to distinguish county-based and POI-based actions. Timing Arcs NEW: Timing Arcs can be plotted for new POI-based timeline actions. These arcs are drawn from the exact point rather than the geographic center of a county. CHANGE: Clarified labels on tooltips and legend entries for timing arcs. Evacuation Timing Report NEW: POI-based timeline actions are included in the report. Read the evacuation timing report page of the HURREVAC user guide for examples. CHANGE: Relabeled and reformatted columns for easier interpretation of data. Light blue columns show the relation between Earliest Reasonable TS Wind Onset and Earliest Evac (Action) Start Time data. Blue columns show the relation between Most Likely TS Wind Onset and Latest Evac (Action) Start Time data. CHANGE: Reformatted text style of rows to distinguish evacuation scenarios (bold) and timeline actions (italic). CHANGE: By default, report is initially sorted by Earliest Evac (Action) Start Time. All other columns are now sortable. FIX: Repaired scenarios and actions for Miami-Dade County, Florida. To see correct functionality for Miami-Dade in this report, enter or reenter new scenarios and actions, and delete the old items from your user profile. Points of Interest CHANGE: Geocode Search button renamed as Add POI to better reflect its purpose. CHANGE: Latitude and longitude columns are again displayed by default. These can be hidden by clicking the arrow of any column header, selecting Columns from the list, then unchecking the boxes next to Lat and Lon. CHANGE: Initial Map Display Level slider expanded so that the widest maximum display can be set to level 4 instead of level 5.