Issuing a Flash Flood Warning (FF.W) in Hazard Services Version 4

Purpose:

This jobsheet will guide forecasters how to issue a FF.W using the new draw and geometry tool.

Tasks:

AT-A-GLANCE:

  • What? Issuing Flash Flood Warnings (FF.W) has been slightly updated in Hazard Services version 4 as the Pencil tool ("Draw Polygon" and "Draw Freehand Polygon") has been replaced by the various Draw and Geometry tools.

  • The Draw Polygon feature in Version 4 of Hazard Services is used to make hazard polygon areas. There are currently four active tools to choose from: the Polygon Tool, the Freehand Polygon Tool, the Ellipse Tool, and the Rectangle Tool. The Path and Points Tools are also visible, but these are non-operational for now.

  • For this jobsheet we will focus on the Polygon Tool. 

 Follow the steps below for more detailed guidance.

  1. Start by opening up Hazard Services by clicking the icon at the top of D2D with the H and raincloud.

  2. The console and HID will appear. Select the Hydro perspective by clicking the icon in the console that has gray waves and the words "HYDRO". 

  3. The Drawing and Actions Tools are located in the Console. The Drawing Tools have the icon with a polygon and pencil on it. Clicking on this icon will immediately put you in polygon drawing mode. The arrow next to the icon is a dropdown menu with all the available options. Selecting an option will change the icon to the last-used Drawing Tool option. Go ahead and select the first option from this dropdown menu which is the Polygon Tool. Ensure the geometry action (menu to the right of the Drawing Tools menu) is set to New; it should be set to New by default if no hazards are selected within the console. 

                                                 

  4. In D2D we will practice first creating a simple polygon on the map. Preferably there is radar data with a hazard loaded in the practice instance of AWIPS for you to draw the polygon with; however, a blank map is fine. Left click on D2D to start your first vertex of the polygon.

  5. You must make at least three vertices for a polygon, so continue to left click on the map to create your polygon. Right click where you want your last vertex to finish the polygon. For additional details on practicing with the Drawing Polygons and Geometry Actions, check out the jobsheet here.

    1. To add a vertex, click on the middle mouse button or the scroll wheel on one of the edges of your polygon. This will create a new vertex and you may drag and drop it to move it with a left click.

    2. To delete a vertex,  simply middle click on a vertex.

  6. In the HID, select "Flash Flood Warning (FF.W.Convective)" and the polygon will change from white to green, along with the hazard type being updated in the Console.

  7. From this point, the HID will strongly resemble the WarnGen interface. However, there are a few differences worth noting here:

    1. In the "Drawing" section, the "Update Hazard Hatched Area" option will preview the down-sampling of the high-resolution polygon to the legacy 20 vertices limit (similar to the Warned/Hatched Area button in WarnGen).
    2. When all of the attributes have been specified (e.g. selecting "Considerable Flash Flooding" IBW type: from the "Details" section), click “Preview” in the HID. Rain rate has been replaced by an Amount/Duration entry and there are other minor differences in the Details section.

  8. Click on each of the tabs on the bottom of the Product Editor (Hazard Data Editor, IBW_FFW_FFS_Formatter, etc.) and note you can only edit information in the white boxes in the main Hazard Data Editor tab. The design is that text editing is done in the Hazard Data Editor and propagated to all other text products. Note the impact based warning structure in the IBW_FFW_FFS_Formatter tab. After modifying the text in the Hazard Data Editor, click "Issue (1)". 

  9. When the "Live Active Product" dialog comes up, click the "Issue" button.

  10. The Console will update with the NEW VTEC Action and an "ISSUED" Status. 


     

Congratulations, you've learned how to issue a Flash Flood Warning using Hazard Services Convective!