NWS Sacramento Public and Fire Weather Zone Changes for 2026

WFO Sacramento will execute a reconfiguration of all zones in interior Northern California for public and fire weather products. This  change is part of an ongoing effort to better target public and fire weather products and services, and limit over-warning during alert dissemination. Over the past couple of years, we have received core partner feedback from emergency managers and fire agencies that our weather forecasts and warnings could be more detailed and precise. Many of the issues with vague and overly broad forecasts and warnings can be traced back to zones which are simply too large and geographically diverse to easily communicate and average. Furthermore, the current zones are very old and in many cases prioritized broad, non-physical boundaries that have made it difficult to create meteorologically valid summaries for these areas. These changes are expected to go live in March 3, 2026. For the official service change notice, please see this pdf. 

Overview of Changes

Before and after maps can be found below for both public and fire zones. Because of the extensive nature of the changes, we've put together ArcGIS viewers online with comparison sliders. 

Public Zone Changes

Fire Weather Zone Changes

Image 1. Current public forecast zones 

Image 2. Current fire weather zones 

Image 3. Proposed new zones for both public and fire

Shapefiles For the New Zones

Public 

Fire

Configuration Change Details

NWS products affected by these Public/Fire Weather forecast zone changes are listed below.

New Criteria for Cold and Winter Storm Products

Based on zone changes, we are implementing new criteria for our cold weather advisory, extreme cold warning, and winter storm warnings. Criteria for all other watch/warning/advisory products remains unchanged. Click on a map below to expand. 

Cold Weather Advisory	Extreme Cold Warning	Winter Storm Warning

Questions or Comments

If you have any questions or comments about this change, please contact:

Courtney Carpenter

Warning Coordination Meteorologist

National Weather Service - Sacramento, CA

courtney.carpenter@noaa.gov