HERA

Data for high winds are obtained from Local Storm Reports (LSR). High winds may be displayed in three subcategories: Gale Force (40-57 mph), Storm Force (58-73 mph), and Hurricane Force (74+ mph).

About HERA

Welcome to the Hazardous Extremes for Risk Assessments (HERA) tool. HERA is a geospatial tool designed to assist local and regional decision-makers to assess and plan for meteorological and climatological hazards in their area. The tool provides decision support through:

• Hazard data visualization in county maps and annual tables
• County-level counts and probabilities of hazardous and extreme events
• Comparisons across counties

The tool uses historical data to provide information by county in the southeastern states. The original version of HERA based on Tableau can be found here.

To navigate through HERA, select State, Hazard and Subcategories from the drop-down menu, and adjust the years of interest via the time slider. To view a Count of the number of hazard events that have occurred and the Probability that at least one event of that hazard will happen in a year, click on a county on the map. The default Count and Probability are calculated for all years, but will change if the user changes the range of years on the sliding time bar. All information on a page can be displayed for a particular county by clicking on a single county, or select multiple counties by holding down the Shift key.

HERA is a CISA-SERCC collaboration and a team effort led by Chip Konrad. Other team members include Ferdouz Cochran, Amanda Farris, Yates McConnell, Montana Eck, Sandra Rayne, William Schmitz, Hunter Spitzer, Bryttani Wooten, and July Yang.

Questions may be addressed to: Bryttani Wooten, Graduate Research Assistant, Southeast Regional Climate Center , Email: bwooten@unc.edu

Data Source

Data Source

Local Storm Reports (LSR): Local Storm Reports originate from National Weather Service (NWS) offices and are verified by the NWS Storm Prediction Center each spring. HERA displays LSR data for hail, high winds and tornadoes from 1989-2018.
National Hurricane Center (NHC) Best Track Data (HURDAT2): The Atlantic hurricane database known as Atlantic HURDAT2 (1851-2019), has six-hourly information on the location, maximum winds, central pressure, and (beginning in 2004) size of all known tropical cyclones and subtropical cyclones. HERA displays hurricanes and tropical storms data from 1950-2019.
National Weather Service (NWS) Watches, Warnings and Advisories (WWA or WaWA): NWS WaWA data is used as a proxy for occurrence of hazards in HERA related to fire weather, floods, heat, and winter weather. The WaWA data is downloaded from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet (IEM) at https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/pickup/wwa/ for years 2006-2019. Only Warnings and Advisories are used as a proxy for the occurrence of hazards, because Advisories and Warnings are issued only when an event is imminent or occurring.

Probability: The Probability of at least one event of a hazard occurring in a year is given based on the historical data. The default Probability is calculated over the available period of record or total years, but will change if the user changes the range of years.
Count: A Count of hazard events in each county can be displayed in a HERA map through all available years or over a selection of years. A highlighted table below the map can display the County by months in any given year.

About HERA