NWS Retired Wind Chill Alert Names: What Replaced Them

The National Weather Service no longer issues “Wind Chill Warning,” “Wind Chill Watch,” “Wind Chill Advisory,” or “Hard Freeze Watch/Warning” as product names. NWS Service Change Notice 23-44, updated “240 PM EDT Tue Mar 26 2024” (“NOUS41 KWBC 261840 AAB”), announced their consolidation into the Extreme Cold Watch/Warning, Freeze Watch/Warning, and Cold Weather Advisory product suite, effective on or about October 1, 2024. NWS Instruction 10-513, dated November 6, 2024, then codified the change in the agency’s directive system. The National Weather Service’s live alert-type list confirms the old names are gone and the replacement names are what the agency now issues.

This original record-reading guide is a general reading aid, not cited evidence. It does not depict a source record; the article text and source links provide the facts.

Key points

• Service Change Notice 23-44, titled “Updated: Implementation of Consolidated NWS Public Weather Program Products Related to Cold: Effective on or about October 1, 2024,” announced the renaming and consolidation.
• “Hard Freeze Watch” became “Freeze Watch,” and “Hard Freeze Warning” became “Freeze Warning.”
• “Wind Chill Watch and Extreme Cold Watch consolidated with Extreme Cold Watch,” and “Wind Chill Warning and Extreme Cold Warning consolidated with Extreme Cold Warning.”
• “Wind Chill Advisory” transitioned to “Cold Weather Advisory.”
• The VTEC phenomena code “HZ” was decommissioned, “WC” was retired, “EC” was retained, and “CW” was newly assigned to Cold Weather Advisory.

The notice: SCN 23-44

The change originates in a formally numbered NWS product bulletin, not an informal announcement. Its header reads “NOUS41 KWBC 261840 AAB,” and the bulletin itself is titled “Service Change Notice 23-44 Updated,” time-stamped “240 PM EDT Tue Mar 26 2024” (SCN 23-44).

The notice’s subject line states its scope directly: “Updated: Implementation of Consolidated NWS Public Weather Program Products Related to Cold: Effective on or about October 1, 2024” (SCN 23-44). This March 2024 update itself describes its own purpose as being “Updated to announce new implementation date of changes to NWS Public Weather Program products related to cold, update links, and to include impacts to NWS Watch, Warning, Advisory product associated colors” (SCN 23-44).

Retired alert names

SCN 23-44 lists the product-name changes as follows:

• “Hard Freeze Watch to Freeze Watch” and “Hard Freeze Warning to Freeze Warning” — a rename, not a merger, of the hard-freeze products (SCN 23-44).
• “Wind Chill Watch and Extreme Cold Watch consolidated with Extreme Cold Watch,” and “Wind Chill Warning and Extreme Cold Warning consolidated with Extreme Cold Warning” — the standalone Wind Chill Watch and Wind Chill Warning products were folded into the existing Extreme Cold Watch and Extreme Cold Warning products, which retained their names (SCN 23-44).
• “Transition of ‘Wind Chill Advisory’ to ‘Cold Weather Advisory’” — the advisory-level product was renamed rather than merged into an existing advisory (SCN 23-44).

The VTEC code changes

Each NWS watch, warning, and advisory carries a Valid Time Event Code (VTEC) phenomena code that identifies the product type in machine-readable alert data. SCN 23-44 specifies exactly what happened to the codes tied to these products:

For the hard-freeze products: “The Valid Time Event Code (VTEC) phenomena code ‘HZ’ for Hard Freeze Watch and Warning will be decommissioned and the Freeze Watch and Warning VTEC phenomena code ‘FZ’ will remain” (SCN 23-44).

For the wind-chill and extreme-cold products: “The VTEC phenomena code ‘WC’ will be retired. Extreme Cold Watch and Warning will retain its VTEC of ‘EC’ and Cold Weather Advisory will replace Wind Chill Advisory with the VTEC of ‘CW’” (SCN 23-44).

In short: HZ is gone (its function absorbed by the already-existing FZ), WC is gone (replaced by a newly assigned CW for the renamed advisory), and EC continues unchanged for Extreme Cold Watch and Warning.

The directive that codified it

Beyond the service change notice, the NWS internal directive governing winter weather product specifications was formally updated. NWS Instruction 10-513, dated “NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE INSTRUCTION 10-513 NOVEMBER 6, 2024,” states that “This instruction supersedes NWSI 10-513, ‘WFO Winter Weather Products Specification,’ effective November 28, 2023” (NWSI 10-513).

The directive documents the same consolidation described in SCN 23-44, listing among its changes the “Removal of Wind Chill Advisories, Watches, and Warnings to reflect the consolidation into the Extreme Cold product suite” (NWSI 10-513).

Discontinued names

The National Weather Service’s live public alerts API — the same feed that powers weather.gov and third-party alert consumers — publishes the current list of valid alert event types. That list includes “Extreme Cold Warning,” “Extreme Cold Watch,” and “Cold Weather Advisory” among the active NWS alert types (api.weather.gov/alerts/types). “Wind Chill Warning,” “Wind Chill Watch,” “Wind Chill Advisory,” and “Hard Freeze Watch/Warning” are not present in that current list, consistent with SCN 23-44 and NWSI 10-513’s description of their retirement.

What this article does not answer

This article identifies the notice, the directive, and the code-level changes behind the product-name consolidation — it does not state any cold-weather temperature or wind-chill-index threshold that triggers Extreme Cold Watch/Warning, Freeze Watch/Warning, or Cold Weather Advisory; those thresholds remain locally defined by individual NWS forecast offices and are outside the scope of SCN 23-44 and NWSI 10-513 as quoted here. It also does not address the wind-chill index itself: the index calculation continues to appear inside the text of surviving products such as Cold Weather Advisory and Extreme Cold Warning even though the standalone “Wind Chill” product name was retired. This article gives no cold-weather safety guidance and makes no statement about any individual reader’s risk or exposure. Finally, its description of the map-color changes is limited to what SCN 23-44 itself states about NWS Watch, Warning, and Advisory product colors; it is not an independent claim about any safety map.

Source links

https://www.weather.gov/media/notification/pdf_2023_24/scn23-44_public_program_text_products_freeze_cold_aab.pdf https://www.weather.gov/media/directives/010_pdfs/pd01005013curr.pdf https://api.weather.gov/alerts/types