NWS Web Site Changing For The Better – March 7th

Your Bookmarks Will Need To Change Too!

The National Weather Service’s primary web site www.weather.gov plans to implement an upgrade. The improvement will involve the point ‘n click site specific forecasts and zone forecasts.

Once these changes occur on March 7, all your current forecast.weather.gov bookmarks will change. Links to a specific forecast page will display an error message that includes a URL to the new web site location. That is your opportunity to update your bookmarks to provide access to NWS forecasts quickly after the upgrade.

The primary focus of the upgrade is to make the forecast pages more reliable during weather events, but there are some benefits of new forecast pages as well that include:

· Addition of 7-day hourly forecast information to the point forecast page

· A new mobile-friendly landing and graphical/tabular forecast page

· Low-bandwidth optimization for all pages, on a partial roll-out at launch

· Option to automatically detect your location on a mobile device

· A new widget mode that allows you to customize the information on the point forecast

The overhauled architecture of the application platform will provide a more stable and consistent service to meet weather information demand, particularly during severe weather events. The updated web site will provide a complete mobile-friendly experience with optimizations for low bandwidth and customized weather widgets.

There are now two new data centers located in College Park, MD, and Boulder, CO, to provide 100% backup capability for operational data used within the forecast process. 

We look forward to providing you with useful and timely information using the improved connectivity and new design. Any questions can be sent to kolly.mars@noaa.gov