Monitor Facility Weather

The Weather destination under Response brings live National Weather Service alerts, current observations, Hazardous Weather Outlooks, Special Weather Statements, and hourly and seven-day forecasts into Operational Command. Incident Overview retains a prominent active-alert banner for immediate visibility. Weather supports situation awareness and severe-weather decision-making without changing incident or HICS records.

Advisory information

Weather information does not create an incident, select an Incident Response Guide, activate the Hospital Incident Management Team, change an operational period, or add incident activity. Authorized hospital command remains responsible for interpreting conditions and deciding what actions to take.

Which facility supplies the weather

Facility weather is included with the Professional and Enterprise subscription plans. It is not available with Essentials. Individual facility and incident access rules still apply after the organization has an eligible plan.

HICSNow chooses the facility for weather automatically:

• When a facility incident is selected, weather follows that incident's active lead facility.
• When no incident is selected, weather follows your primary active facility.
• When a health-system incident is selected, HICSNow does not silently choose one participating facility. The Weather page instead explains that weather is facility-specific and asks you to select a facility incident.

Changing the selected facility incident also changes the weather facility. The Weather destination is available before Operational Period 01 is established.

Weather is available only for active facilities the signed-in user may access. Ordinary users and Facility Administrators cannot request weather for an unassigned facility. Tenant Administrators retain organization-wide access to active facility weather. Facilities from another organization are never available.

Review the highest-priority alert

When the National Weather Service reports one or more active alerts for the facility point, the highest-priority alert appears in a prominent banner at the top of Incident Overview, above the incident workspace. HICSNow considers severity and urgency when deciding which alert receives banner treatment.

The banner identifies the highest-priority alert, its headline, and its reported end time. Select View details to open a scrollable list of every active alert. Each alert has a separate bordered section and identifies:

• severity, urgency, and certainty;
• affected area and issuing office;
• effective and ending times;
• the full description; and
• National Weather Service instructions, when supplied.

On the Weather page, the Active NWS alerts card is the single authoritative alert area instead of repeating the Incident Overview banner. The card remains at the top and prominently shows the number of active alerts, the highest reported severity, its latest successful check time, and every active alert in priority order. Its border, background, warning icon, severity label, and text make the warning recognizable without relying on color alone. Select an alert row to open its complete details.

Alerts whose reported expiration or end time has passed are not displayed.

Review current conditions

Open Response, select Weather, and locate Current conditions below the active-alert card.

The current-conditions area uses the nearest usable National Weather Service observation station. Measurements are shown only when the station reports them. Available information can include:

• condition description;
• temperature and feels-like temperature;
• relative humidity;
• wind direction, speed, and gusts;
• visibility;
• observation station name and identifier; and
• exact observation time and age.

Not reported means the selected station did not supply that individual measurement. It does not prevent the remaining measurements from appearing.

The card visibly attributes the information to the National Weather Service and identifies the observation station and time. Select National Weather Service to open the official service website in a new tab.

Review outlooks and statements

The Weather Advisories card below current conditions contains a separate NWS outlooks and statements section with two types of advisory text products for the facility area:

• A Hazardous Weather Outlook describes potential hazardous weather during the National Weather Service outlook period, including conditions that may later lead to a watch, warning, or advisory.
• A Special Weather Statement describes ongoing, imminent, or developing conditions that call for heightened awareness.

Each item identifies its type, summary, issue time, and validity time. A visible View details label, shaded hover treatment, and keyboard focus outline show that the complete row can be selected. Select an item to read its issuing office and the complete text that applies to the facility's forecast or county zone. Items are removed after their National Weather Service validity time passes.

Outlooks and statements are not active watches, warnings, or advisories. They never receive the prominent alert banner and are not used to rank active alerts. If the National Weather Service also supplies a Special Weather Statement as an active alert, HICSNow avoids presenting the same product in both sections.

Review the extended forecast

The Extended forecast card appears below Weather Advisories. Use the Forecast range menu to choose:

• Hourly for a compact facility-local timeline. The first 12 hours appear initially; select Show all 24 hours to extend the timeline, or Show next 12 hours to collapse it again. Each hour shows time, condition symbol, temperature, and precipitation probability. Select an hour to reveal its condition, wind, precipitation, forecast humidity, forecast dew point, forecast pressure, forecast visibility, and exact period times; or
• 7 Day for daily cards covering the next seven days. HICSNow groups the National Weather Service daytime and nighttime periods for each facility-local date and labels their temperatures High and Low. When the available forecast begins at night or ends before the matching period, the missing high or low is labeled Not available.

Hourly periods are grouped under Today, Tonight, and Tomorrow when applicable and can be reviewed with a keyboard. Each daily card shows the high, low, daytime and nighttime conditions, precipitation chance, and wind when supplied. HICSNow uses local condition symbols and does not load the provider's icon service. The card identifies both the National Weather Service forecast update time and the time HICSNow last checked the forecast.

Humidity, dew point, pressure, and visibility in the selected-hour details are forecast grid values rather than current station observations. Pressure is shown in both inHg and hPa, and visibility is shown in miles. Not reported means the National Weather Service did not supply that forecast layer for the selected hour; the remaining forecast information can still be used.

Forecasts are projections, not current observations. Review the active-alert and advisory sections and confirm source times before making an operational decision.

Understand refresh timing

HICSNow requests live weather from the National Weather Service API through its server and reuses recent results to avoid unnecessary provider traffic. The browser never contacts the provider directly.

Refresh timing is:

• active alerts may refresh once per minute;
• current observations may refresh every five minutes;
• outlooks and statements may refresh every five minutes;
• hourly and seven-day forecasts may refresh every 15 minutes; and
• facility-to-station mapping may refresh every 24 hours.

The browser checks for updates once per minute while the page is visible. Polling pauses while the page is hidden and resumes when you return. Weather therefore updates automatically, but it is not a continuous streaming feed. Always review the source timestamp before relying on an observation.

Recognize stale or unavailable information

HICSNow preserves the last successfully received values when a provider cannot be reached.

• Weather could not be refreshed means displayed values are last known. The warning includes the exact successful refresh time.
• Alert status unverified - showing last known information appears inside the active-alert card when the most recent alert check failed. The card shows the failed-at time, and any alerts shown may no longer represent current conditions.
• Outlook and statement status is unverified means the latest text-product check failed. Outlooks or statements shown are last known and may no longer represent current conditions.
• Forecast status is unverified means the latest forecast check failed. Forecast periods shown are last known and may have changed at the source.
• National Weather Service data is temporarily unavailable means no usable last-known weather has been received for that facility yet.
• Facility location needs review means the facility does not have usable coordinates.

For time-sensitive decisions, follow the warning and verify urgent conditions directly with the National Weather Service or another approved hospital source.

Resolve a facility-location warning

Tenant Administrators and permitted Facility Administrators can correct a facility location:

1. Open Administration.
2. Open the affected facility and select Edit.
3. Confirm the required street address, city, state, and ZIP code.
4. Select Locate address and review the returned marker. Verify any result labeled Approximate before saving.
5. If the correct address still does not produce the right location, select Open location map and click the intended point. You can also select Place custom pin, drag the marker, or enter valid latitude and longitude values.
6. Select Save. Moving a pin does not change the facility's postal address.

Facility location is available with every plan, even though this Weather destination remains limited to Professional and Enterprise.

See Manage facilities for complete configuration guidance.

Features not included yet

This release does not display radar, weather maps, alert acknowledgements, or outbound weather notifications. A Hazardous Weather Outlook remains a separate NWS hazard-awareness text product and does not replace the extended forecast.