Dear Emergency Managers, We wanted to take this opportunity, especially now that spring and summer are approaching, to remind everyone that the National Weather Service in Norton, MA is able to provide support to emergency managers and town officials for large events for the overall purpose of public safety and safety of first responders. We call this "DSS," or Decision Support Services. Typically, these events would have several thousand people or more in attendance. Our support could be in the form of emails/forecast matrices ahead of the event, phone calls during an event if a threshold is reached, or actual onsite presence in a multi-agency coordination center (for huge events such as the July 4th Boston Pops on the Esplanade or the Boston Marathon, etc.). Below is a link to the form that you would need to complete in order to initiate a request -- please give several weeks of heads-up notice to us. In that form, you will be asked to provide us with what your critical weather criteria/thresholds may be. For example, for some events you may only be interested in whether lightning is forecast/approaching. For other events it could be 1" or more of rain or 30+ mph wind gusts that you are concerned with. We can take that information and send you a color-coded matrix ahead of time that highlights your main weather parameters of concern, for example. Some of you have already used this form, but since we typically hear from the same EMs, we wanted to send it out again via this email list. https://www.weather.gov/box/em_form Our DSS Program Leader is Frank Nocera (frank.nocera@noaa.gov). If you have any questions, please contact either Frank or me. Thanks. Sincerely, Glenn Field Warning Coordination Meteorologist NWS - Norton, MA (508) 622-3250 ext. 223 (or press 2 from menu) Direct line: 508-622-3323