The

National Weather Service The National Weather Service (NWS) is an agency of the United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weather-related products to organizations and the public for the ...

operates 122 weather forecast offices in six regions. Each weather forecast office (WFO or NWSFO) has a geographic area of responsibility, also known as a county warning area, for issuing local public, marine, aviation, fire, and

hydrology Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and environmental watershed sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is call ...

forecasts. They also issue

severe weather Severe weather is any dangerous meteorological phenomenon with the potential to cause damage, serious social disruption, or loss of human life. Types of severe weather phenomena vary, depending on the latitude, altitude, topography, and atmos ...

warnings, gather

weather observation Weather reconnaissance is the acquisition of weather data used for research and planning. Typically the term reconnaissance refers to observing weather from the air, as opposed to the ground. Methods Aircraft Helicopters are not built to w ...

s, and daily and monthly

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologi ...

data for their assigned area. The local weather forecast offices also control the broadcasts of weather information on the

NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards NOAA Weather Radio NWR; also known as NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards is an automated 24-hour network of VHF FM weather radio stations in the United States (U.S.) that broadcast weather information directly from a nearby National Weather Servi ...

stations.

History

Prior to the NWS reorganization in the 1990s, each state and territory had its own forecast office — with the exception of northern and southern California; north, south, and west Texas; and upper and lower

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

. Local offices (NWSOs) then each maintained their own county warning area, and the official hourly and daily readings at the

weather station A weather station is a facility, either on land or sea, with instruments and equipment for measuring atmospheric conditions to provide information for weather forecasts and to study the weather and climate. The measurements taken include tempera ...

where they were located, typically at a regional airport in a smaller city. During the reorganization, many of these became forecast offices, while most were closed in favor of cheaper

automatic weather station An automatic weather station (AWS) is an automated version of the traditional weather station, either to save human labour or to enable measurements from remote areas. An AWS will typically consist of a weather-proof enclosure containing the data ...

s like

AWOS Airport weather stations are automated sensor suites which are designed to serve aviation and meteorological operations, weather forecasting and climatology. Automated airport weather stations have become part of the backbone of weather observing ...

and

ASOS ASOS or Asos may refer to: * Asos, a village in Greece * ASOS (retailer), a UK online fashion store * Association Sportive Oussou Saka, a Beninese football team * Automated Surface Observing System, a type of weather station * Air Support Operat ...

. Since then, many offices and

weather radar Weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar (WSR) and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, and estimate its type (rain, snow, hail etc.). Modern weather radars are mostly pulse- ...

s have moved to separate non-airport locations, where they are assigned new

location identifier A location identifier is a symbolic representation for the name and the location of an airport, navigation aid, or weather station, and is used for staffed air traffic control facilities in air traffic control, telecommunications, computer programm ...

s, such as EYW/KEYW to KEY/KKEY for NWSFO Key West, and BHM/KBHM to BMX/KBMX for

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...

radar.

Forecast offices

Alaska Region

Central Region

Eastern Region

Pacific Region

Southern Region

Western Region

An interactive map of all regions with links to individual WFOs can be found here: https://www.weather.gov/srh/nwsoffices

References

{{List of National Weather Service Weather Forecast Offices National Weather Service *