Biloxi, Mississippi

... 2010 National flood safety awareness week...

Your National Weather Service office at New Orleans/Baton Rouge
Louisiana invites your participation in the National flood safety
awareness week... March 15 to 19... 2010. The purpose of this week is
to raise public attention to the dangers of flooding and ways to
protect life and property.

Each year flooding kills more people than any other form of
weather... causing damages in excess of 5.2 billion dollars. Three
quarters of all presidential declared disasters result from floods.

Today... March 15... we will focus on the N o a a National weather
service's advanced hydrologic prediction service or a h p S. A h p S
provides water prediction and delivery methods to serve your needs
and the needs of all of our southwest Mississippi... coastal
Mississippi and southeast Louisiana partners in protecting life and
property. A h p S provides information ranging from floods
situations to extreme droughts.

A h p S provides you with user-friendly text and graphical forecasts
that are available online. The goal of these products is to help
emergency managers... homeowners... and other users to be better
prepared to defend their communities.

Across southwest Mississippi... coastal Mississippi... and southeast
Louisiana... many industries rely upon accurate weather and river
information to make business decisions and to determine daily
operations. Information in a h p S is useful for mariners...
professional fishermen and shrimpers... and for navigational
purposes. A h p S also helps recreational water users to plan safe
outings - out of harms way.

A h p S encompasses other hydrologic and meteorological information
as well. From a h p S... the public can access the network of
Doppler radars, satellites, a network of automated surface observing
sites, and the new flash flood monitoring program to warn the public
about potential flooding and flash flooding. In addition... the
forecasts and products developed in the lower Mississippi River
forecast center... and the other twelve river forecast centers
nationwide... can be accessed via a h p S.

A h p S enables you to get reliable answers to such questions as:

How high will the river rise?
When will the river crest?
Where will the river flood?
How long will the flood last?
How good is the forecast?

The National Weather Service has recently added some enhancements to
the a h p S pages. These enhancements include:

Multi-sensor precipitation information
r S S feed alert capabilities
downloadable shape and k M z files for g I S users
probabilistic river forecasts

Additional information about a h p S and the 2010 flood safety
awareness week is available at:

Www.Weather.Gov/floodsafety/ (all lowercase)

Tuesday's topic will be "turn around... don't drown" or T a d d.

For more information contact the service hydrologist... Patricia
Brown at 9 8 5 6 4 5 0 5 6 5.