The Special Weather Statement (abbreviated SPS for complex reasons) is one of the product tools available to NWS forecast offices to alert the public to immediate weather events. It can be used to alert the public to just below severe criterion storms. In fact, the SPS has been updated over the years to carry many of the same tags that are included in Severe Thunderstorm Warnings, such as max hail size and wind gusts. They also can be issued for a specific geographic area within an included polygon. NWS Quad Cities issued three such SPSs yesterday (1, 2, and 3). The featured chart presents the number of such SPS products that included polygons by day of the year for the office. The IEM attempts to curate an archive of these SPS products, which includes a download portal and an archive search by point.

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