Discontinuation of the Hazardous Weather Outlook

Beginning Monday, October 19, the Chicago Forecast Office will no longer issue the Hazardous Weather Outlook (HWO) text product as we transition to more effective methods of communicating this information.

For a detailed look at all weather hazards expected during the next week, please see our Graphical Hazardous Weather Outlook. On our website, this is the first link under the Current Hazards tab. To reach the Graphical HWO directly, visit:

weather.gov/erh/ghwo?wfo=lot

For a summary of our key weather messages, including storm motions when thunderstorms are expected, please see the Weather Story graphics available on our website and our social media channels. To reach the Weather Story graphics directly, visit:

weather.gov/chicago/WeatherStory

For listeners of NOAA Weather Radio, we plan to replace the HWO with a summary of key forecast messages matching those listed at the top of our Area Forecast Discussion. These will highlight potentially hazardous weather along with any other forecast items of interest. In that sense, we hope they will be even more useful to our listeners than the current HWO.