# Hurricane local statement

A hurricane local statement (HLS) is a weather statement produced for the public by the local Weather Forecast Offices of the National Weather Service in the U.S. for areas affected or forecast to be affected by a tropical storm or hurricane that provides an overview of the storm's local effects, including expected weather conditions, evacuation decisions made by local officials, and precautions necessary to protect life and property. The National Weather Services considers the HLS to be the "flagship product" available to Weather Forecast Offices for outlining tropical cyclone watches and warnings and impacts, and is their most visible product during such events.$^{:37}$ Descriptions of the affected areas, relevant tropical cyclone watches and warnings, recommendations for precautionary measures, and expected timing and severity of possible threats are typically included in an HLS. The HLS can incorporate projected impacts from pre-written descriptions tailored for different storm intensities; these template descriptions were developed in the 1990s and became widely available to forecasters for use in the HLS by 2001. The bulletin issued by the Weather Forecast Office in Slidell, Louisiana, as Hurricane Katrina approached on August 28, 2005, known as "The Bulletin", was lauded by the National Weather Service as having further encouraged vulnerable individuals to evacuate. Not all forecast offices can issue an HLS.
Locally-tailored statements regarding hurricanes have been a part of the National Weather Service's hurricane warning program since the inception of the modern National Weather Service in 1970 and were carried over from the U.S. Weather Bureau that preceded it. Such statements were formalized as the Hurricane Local Statement following the advent of the Automation of Field Operations and Services (AFOS) within the National Weather Service in 1978. Within the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System, HLS was initially composed of two components: an automated section providing meteorological information using the National Digital Forecast Database (also known as a TCV) and a tailored section with input from the local Weather Forecast Office describing potential impacts. In 1999, the Weather Forecast Office in Melbourne, Florida, began accompanying the HLS with a suite of graphics known as a graphical HLS (gHLS). In 2009, the National Weather Service made this graphical product available for all Weather Forecast Offices along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean.
The original HLS format was often criticized for being unwieldy. In its service assessment following Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the National Weather Service found the HLS to be too long, redundant, and constrained by the timing of the National Hurricane Center's products. During Hurricane Irene in 2011, forecast offices in the Mid-Atlantic states and Northeastern U.S. criticized the HLS for its excessive length and broad scope.$^{:33}$ On average, there was a one-hour gap between the issuance of the TCV segment and the remainder of the HLS among the 12 Weather Forecast Offices impacted by Irene.$^{:46}$ Forecasters were also forced to debug the software responsible for issuing the statement as events unfolded.$^{:37}$ The National Weather Service later proposed that the automated and human-driven components of the HLS be issued as two separate products as part of a broader effort to improve the readability, timing, and usefulness of the product. This proposal came to fruition in 2015, scaling back the HLS to a summary product and separating it from the TCV.

## Example

The following hurricane local statement was issued by the National Weather Service office in Key West, Florida prior to the arrival of Hurricane Wilma.