Critical Weather Day declared
Notices & outages
The 12Z Global Forecast System model is currently running as scheduled.
This summary was written by a small AI model because our rule-based reader could not confidently interpret the wording. The original text is below.
Balloon reports UPDATED 12Z RAOB RECAP...
Twice a day, NWS and partner agencies release weather balloons that carry a radiosonde — a small instrument package that radios back temperature, humidity, pressure and wind as it climbs. Those soundings are one of the main ingredients in a forecast model’s starting conditions. This section is the roll call of stations that had a problem for the 12Z run.
1 station was flagged: 1 sent no usable sounding at all. A handful of gaps is normal and is not by itself a sign of a forecast problem — the models are built to work with an incomplete picture.
Satellite moves MDS STATUS...
Each GOES weather satellite has two “mesoscale sectors” — small, movable windows that the satellite photographs roughly every 60 seconds, far more often than its routine full-disk and continental scans. Forecasters aim them at whatever is most important that day. This section announces where they are being pointed and for how long.
GOES-West is pointing mesoscale sector 1 at a point about 155 mi SE of Bend, OR — to support fire weather operations. That means this patch of sky gets a fresh satellite image about once a minute instead of every 5 to 10 minutes, so forecasters can watch storms develop almost in real time.
- Centre point
- 42.2°N, 119.6°W view on map
- Reason given
- fire weather ops over the Pacific Northwest
Critical Weather Day CRITICAL WEATHER DAY STATUS...
A Critical Weather Day has been declared.
A “Critical Weather Day” is an internal NWS operations posture. When one is declared, NWS postpones scheduled software, hardware and network changes at the affected offices so that nothing is disturbed while forecasters are working high-impact weather. Emergency changes still get made, but they need senior sign-off. It is a signal about how NWS is protecting its own systems — it is not a forecast or a warning, and it does not tell you anything about conditions where you live.
Show the original message
Exactly as NWS transmitted it. Everything above is our plain-English reading of this text — if the two ever disagree, this is the authoritative version.
000 NOUS42 KWNO 131526 ADMSDM SENIOR DUTY METEOROLOGIST NWS ADMINISTRATIVE MESSAGE NWS CENTRAL OPERATIONS COLLEGE PARK MD 1525Z THU AUG 13 2026 The 12Z GFS began and is running on time. UPDATED 12Z RAOB RECAP... 91376/MAJ - No report for the NAM...in for the GFS MDS STATUS... GOES-W MDS Sector 1 was re-centered from 42.2N/119.6W to 42.2N/118.1W in support of fire weather ops over the Pacific Northwest. CRITICAL WEATHER DAY STATUS... Critical Weather Day is in effect for tropical cyclone ops in Hawaii. CRITICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK...UPDATED Thursday - Critical...Tropical Cyclone. Caution...Excessive Rainfall, Flooding. Friday - Critical...Tropical Cyclone. Saturday - Critical...Tropical Cyclone. Ready/SDM/NCO