The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) has begun issuing weather warnings for precisely drawn local areas rather than entire provinces, NOS reports. The change took effect on Monday, 2 November, and applies to warnings for storms, fog, heat, slippery roads, thunderstorms and other hazardous conditions. Under the old system, a patch of ice in the north of North Holland could trigger a code yellow, orange or red for the whole province, and approaching storms often put large parts of the country under warning even when meteorologists knew the alert was unnecessary.
Why it matters
The shift is meant to make warnings more useful. According to NOS, the institute expects organisations to be able to prepare more precisely for weather risks, and it hopes residents will less often receive an alert that does not match conditions where they live. Maarten van Aalst, the KNMI's chief director, told NOS that the new approach lets the service warn people better while also keeping confidence in warnings intact. A warning that fires too broadly, he suggested, risks eroding the trust that makes people act when a serious alert does arrive.
Maps drawn without provincial borders
Forecasters can now mark out on a map the specific area covered by a warning, without being constrained by provincial or municipal boundaries, NOS reports. The maps are available on the KNMI website and in its app, where users can zoom in or search for their own town. Organisations can also download the underlying data to build their own maps or applications on top of it.
The change required legislation first. Since 20 May, the KNMI has been permitted to issue warnings on a smaller scale than provinces, and the institute then spent several months preparing so that it could handle the new system technically, according to NOS.
Emergency services expect efficiency gains
Regional safety authorities anticipate practical benefits. Remmy van Lieshout, director of crisis management at the Safety Region Amsterdam-Amstelland, gave NOS the example of a storm hitting Den Helder in the north of North Holland. In that case her region must brace for fallen trees and accidents in Den Helder — but under the current setup it also prepares in Amsterdam, because it cannot tell whether the storm will reach the capital. From November, she said, the region should be told the storm is in Den Helder and not in Amsterdam.
The KNMI has already taken a smaller step in the same direction. In August it added a feature to its app that notifies users when a thunderstorm is at most 15 minutes away. NOS reports that the function has so far been used at least once, for a storm that struck Middelburg in Zeeland on 28 August.
Thresholds and a legal fight
The warning colours remain, but the thresholds behind them are fixed per weather type for code yellow and code orange, NOS reports. Code red is issued in consultation with other organisations when the impact of the weather is clearly very large. This year the KNMI issued a code red for heat for the first time. The Caribbean islands that are part of the Kingdom keep their own warning system, for hurricanes and other hazards, coordinated with neighbouring islands.
The institute's app has also been the subject of a dispute. Commercial weather information providers argued last year that the KNMI competes with them unfairly, since it is funded by taxpayers and offers a free app. A court ruled against them, and the KNMI was allowed to keep the app available, according to NOS.
Watch for how the public and emergency services respond once the first significant autumn or winter weather passes through under the new localised system — and whether the KNMI's hope of fewer mismatched alerts holds up in practice.
