2020 Fire Weather Zone Changes

Overview

Effective October 29th, 2020, the National Weather Service forecast office in Aberdeen, SD (ABR) will modify fire weather zone boundaries across central and northeast South Dakota. The purpose of this change is to better meet the needs of fire partners and improve fire weather support, including improved watch, warning, and forecast products. The new fire weather forecast zone boundaries will align with county boundaries. These changes were necessary to create more detailed fire weather forecasts by reducing the size of the fire zones and resultant forecast area.

The change in fire zone boundaries will require new fire weather zone numbers. Details of these zone number changes are listed in the table below:

Current Fire Zone Numbers	Future Fire Zone Numbers (October 29, 2020)

SDZ267 - Lower Bad River	SDZ003 - Corson
SDZ268 - Upper Cheyenne	SDZ004 - Campbell
SDZ269 - Upper Missouri Coteau	SDZ005 - McPherson
SDZ270 - Missouri Coteau	SDZ006 - Brown
SDZ271 - Upper James River	SDZ007 - Marshall
SDZ272 - Prairie Coteau	SDZ008 - Roberts
SDZ273 - Red River Valley	SDZ009 - Walworth
	SDZ010 - Edmunds
	SDZ011 - Day
	SDZ015 - Dewey
	SDZ016 - Potter
	SDZ017 - Faulk
	SDZ018 - Spink
	SDZ019 - Clark
	SDZ020 - Codington
	SDZ021 - Grant
	SDZ022 - Hamlin
	SDZ023 - Deuel
	SDZ033 - Stanley
	SDZ034 - Sully
	SDZ035 - Hughes
	SDZ036 - Hyde
	SDZ037 - Hand
	SDZ045 - Jones
	SDZ048 - Lyman
	SDZ051 - Buffalo

Maps

Graphical descriptions of the old and new fire weather zones are available below:

Current Fire Weather Zones

Future Fire Weather Zones on October 29, 2020

Text Products

NWS watch, warning, and forecast products affected by these changes are:

NWS Aberdeen Products	WMO Heading	AWIPS ID
Fire Weather Watch	WWUS83 KABR	RFWABR
Red Flag Warning	WWUS83 KABR	RFWABR
Fire Weather Planning Forecast	FNUS53 KABR	FWFABR

NWS partners and users will need to make necessary changes to their communications systems to accommodate these fire weather forecast zone changes. A shapefile of the new fire weather forecast zones for NWS ABR is online at: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/geodata/catalog/wsom/html/firezone.htm

For more information, please contact:

Travis Tarver - Fire Weather Program Manager

824 Brown County 14 S.

Aberdeen, SD 57401

605-290-0292

travis.tarver@noaa.gov

National Service Change Notices are online at: http://www.weather.gov/os/notif.htm

Service Chance Notice issued Wednesday, August 12, 2020