(November 22, 2022) — The National Weather Service (NWS) is currently testing a Collaborated Forecast Process (CFP) for quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPF) involving Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) and River Forecast Centers (RFCs) within the contiguous United States and the Weather Prediction Center (WPC). The goal of this test is to determine how field offices and WPC can best collaborate in creating a single, unified precipitation forecast, while ensuring that the expertise of forecasters in each office is integrated into the final QPF.
An independent Test and Evaluation (T&E) team consisting of representatives of both labor and management has been charged with providing an impartial assessment of the success of the test. Forecaster surveys are a key piece of information for this team, and will factor heavily into the assessment. Please help this team out by filling out the surveys!
There are two surveys available. The first is labeled as a monthly survey, and is intended to be filled out about every month to capture impacts associated with routine, day to day operations. Feel free to fill this out more frequently if desired.
The second survey is an event driven survey, and is intended to capture impacts associated with a specific, impactful QPF event. If you work an impactful event (generally defined as something involving flood or winter weather watches or warnings, flood or significant winter weather impacts, or changes to core partner operations), please fill out this survey!
Surveys differ as to whether you work at a WFO, a RFC or the Water Center (NWC), or at WPC. The respective surveys are linked below:
RFCs/NWC Monthly/Routine Event Driven
Please use the surveys to submit comments and feedback regarding the test. If you have specific questions about the test, feel free to reach out to the team’s NWSEO representatives.
NWSEO T&E Team Representatives Andy Boxell Central Region Vice Chairperson andy.boxell@gmail.com
Amy Campbell Vice Steward, WPC lapus_lingue@yahoo.com