NWS rolls out targeted weather warning system for Hennepin County
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When a warning is issued for a county, the sirens sound, alerting everyone. What happens, though, when you’re in the warned county but the threat is still far from your location?
In Hennepin County, the Twin Cities National Weather Service office on Wednesday will launch its partial county alerting system, designed to ensure more precise alerts for areas that are truly at risk, rather than sounding alarms for the entire county.
Here’s a look at how it works.
What is partial county alerting?
This system divides the county into six warning regions: northwest, northeast, west-central, central-east and south Hennepin.
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When a warning is issued for Hennepin County, instead of the entire county being included in the warning area only the specific portion of the county directly affected by the threat will be included.
This approach allows for more precise and accurate weather alerts, ensuring that only the areas truly impacted by a weather event receive notifications.
For Hennepin County residents with weather radios, there are two options. You can continue using the SAME (Specific Area Message Encoding) location code for all of Hennepin County, or you can switch to the new SAME location codes for the partial county alerting system.
This offers the flexibility to receive alerts either for the entire county or just the specific area that may be affected.