• NWS Mainpage
• Archived NWS Watch, Warnings, Advisories

This page provides a download interface to IEM processed metadata/geometries associated with National Weather Service VTEC-enabled watch, warning, and advisory events. You can download this information on-demand in a zip-file (containing a shapefile + CSV), KML, or Microsoft Excel format.

If you are looking for a real-time source of warning shapefiles, you can find that here.

Related: NWS Misc Polygons   SPC Convective Discussions   SPC/WPC Outlooks   SPC Watch Polygons   WPC Precip Discussions

Service changes:

• 10 Apr 2024: Polygons associated with CANcel VTEC events when the event is still active for other areas have been culled from the database and thus this portal. These were not providing any value and were confusing users.
• 12 Mar 2019: Added UPDATED column to the dataset providing the timestamp of the most recent NWS Text Product for the event.
• 3 Feb 2016: This service used to allow the download of the high-resolution AWIPS counties/zones shapes. Sadly, the size of these polygons would overwhelm the backend data service. So now this service only returns the simplified county/zone polygons. You may wish to do a join against the AWIPS Geodatabase to get the high resolution depiction. The NWS_UGC column is what you would use to join.

Archive status:

Publications Citing IEM Data (View All)

These are the most recent 10 publications that have cited the usage of data from this page. This list is not exhaustive, so please let us know if you have a publication that should be added.

• Lee, S., A. Bose. 2025, Capturing Infrastructure Interdependencies for Power Outages Prediction During Extreme Events. 2024 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData). https://doi.org/10.1109/BigData62323.2024.10825596
• Lee, S., A. Tabassum, et al. 2024, A Comprehensive Model for Analyzing the Effects of Power Outages on Customers. 2024 Resilience Week (RWS), Austin, TX, USA, 2024, pp. 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1109/RWS62797.2024.10799412
• Ash, K., C. Williams, et al. 2024, Quantifying and Visualizing Severe Thunderstorm Motion Uncertainty for Improved Decision Support. Weather and Forecasting (39:12). https://doi.org/10.1175/WAF-D-24-0041.1
• Islam, R., S. Jones, et al. 2024, Potential of using SAVs in evacuating vulnerable population during tornado early warning: a case study of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. Transportation Planning and Technology, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/03081060.2024.2445646
• Wahdat, A.Z., J.L. Lusk. 2024. Extreme weather events, food shopping behavior, and card spending. Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jaa2.140
• Abatzoglou, J.T., E. Fleishman, et al, 2024. The Efficacy of Red Flag Warnings in Mitigating Human-Caused Wildfires across the Western United States. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-24-0120.1
• Ideker, M.A. 2024. A composite analysis of critical fire weather in the Middle Mississippi Valley. St Louis University Thesis. https://www.proquest.com/docview/3131046911
• Gellman, J., H. Henninghausen et al, 2024. The Cost of Hurricanes.. https://jacobgellman.github.io/files/gellman_et_al_2024-cost_hurricane_evacuations.pdf
• Ernst, S., J. Ripberger, et al, 2024. A Tale of Two Hazards: Studying Broadcast Meteorologist Communication of Simultaneous Tornado and Flash Flood (TORFF) Events. Journal of Operational Meteorology. Vol 12 Issue 1, p1-18. https://doi.org/10.15191/nwajom.2024.1201
• Krocak, M., J. Ripberger, et al. 2023, Public Information Priorities across Weather Hazards and Time Scales. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Volume 104, Issue 4. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-22-0190.1