National Weather Service United States Department of Commerce

 

Shapefile Type: Polygon

Data source: Derived from US Counties

Naming convention: z_ddmmyy  where ddmmyy = day-month-year

NWS Specifications: NWSM 10-507

Description: The NWS issues forecasts and some watches and warnings for public zones which usually are the same as counties but in many cases are subsets of counties.  Counties are subset into zones to allow for more accurate forecasts because of the differences in weather within a county due to such things as elevation or proximity to large bodies of water.

 

Description Valid date Data Download # Records MD5SUM Documentation
Public Forecast Zones 05 March 2024 z_05mr24.zip 4063 950d7c4de2a86c6abe80f269939c9722
Date last upload: 22-FEB-24
Change History Metadata

 

Shapefile Attributes:

Field Name Type  Width, Decimals Description
STATE Character 2 U.S. Postal Standard two letter abbreviation
ZONE Character 3 Zone Number from NWSI 10-507.
CWA Character 3 CWA (WFO) abbreviation from NWSI 10-507.
NAME Character 254 Zone name from NWSI 10-507.
STATE_ZONE Character 5 Concatenation of State and Zone
TIME_ZONE Character 2 Time zone abbreviation
FE_AREA Character 2 Cardinal area of state
LON Numeric 10,5 Longitude of Centroid (decimal degrees)
LAT Numeric 9,5 Latitude of Centroid (decimal degrees)
SHORTNAME Character 32 Name truncated to 32 characters