Communicating Impact

An important part of producing a forecast for the public is communicating the impacts that the weather will have.  As part of the HPC afternoon transportation briefing, the impact graphics produced by HPC and AWC forecasters is critiqued by human factors researchers.  They provide feedback on how well the graphics communicated impacts important to emergency managers and air traffic decision makers.

One of the pieces of feedback offered by these communication experts on yesterday's graphic was that when multiple regions of Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) were depicted, it was somewhat difficult to tell which side of the red line was supposed to be IFR.  This was especially the case when these regions were close to each other.  The first image below is the original briefing graphic, where the "IFR" label was placed on the side of the red contours where IFR was expected.  Adding a shading to the appropriate side of the contour reduced confusion and provides higher "glance value" and communicated this information more quickly.

Original briefing graphic.

Updated briefing graphic with shading indicating regions where IFR was forecast.