Emergency support - service overview
The Met Office provides a range of services that help authorities prepare for and respond to emergencies that are caused or influenced by the weather. Linked to these services is advice, available from teams of Met Office forecasters, specialist scientists and advisors, on the interpretation and impact of the weather during an emergency. This service is co-ordinated through the Met Office’s team of regionally based Public Weather Service (PWS) Advisors who can be called upon to provide advice at a strategic command and control centre.
To further enhance the Met Office’s support for the Emergency Response community, the Emergency Support service has recently been developed. This is a free-at-point-of-use service, designed mainly for Category 1 and 2 Responders (as defined in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004). It is provided to aid the work of incident management teams in dealing with a variety of environmental emergencies situations such as flooding, chemical release, radiological incidents, large fires, biological hazards and storm tides.
The service is designed to supplement the role of the PWS Advisors in providing consistent weather related information and interpretation for the UK Emergency Response community.
The Emergency Support service is web-based and provides two types of information:
1. Up-to-date observations and forecast information, automatically updated, including:
- Rainfall radar data
- Real-time rain-gauge observations
- Forecast rainfall data
- Wind observations
- Forecast wind data
- Severe weather warnings
- CHEMETs
- Lightning detection information
2. Emergency event-specific content:
- Specifically generated products and guidance relevant to a particular emergency event
The Emergency Support service should only be used in conjunction with the advice of a PWS Advisor. While it is designed to provide an easy-to-access, up-to-date source of information, a PWS Advisor should be consulted for advice on interpretation and guidance on the most appropriate response.
Accessing the Emergency Support Service
