National Severe Weather Warning Service (NSWWS)

The NSWWS warns the community by providing warnings of severe or hazardous weather which could cause problems, ranging from widespread disruption of communications to conditions resulting in transport difficulties or threatening lives.

It is a free-at-point-of-use warning service, mainly for Category 1 and 2 responders (as defined in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004). Weather warnings for specified severe weather events can be sent to responders using fax, e-mail, FTP and SMS text message formats.

These warnings alert recipients to a forecast severe/extreme weather event and allows for planning of actions needed to mitigate or reduce the impact of the weather.

This support is provided in three ways:

• To the public at large via the broadcast media
• To the civil emergency authorities
• To the Ministry of Defence when conditions may become sufficiently severe to warrant military aid

Heavy rainfall warning

The Met Office provides daily weather forecasts and heavy rainfall warnings that supplement the information provided under the radar arrangement and give advanced warning of situations that could require the Environment Agency to issue flood warnings.

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