New system developed to predict dangerous storms in Illinois

As Illinois enters the height of tornado season, weather forecasters now have a new way to predict dangerous storms.

It's called Hazard Services, a modernization of the software framework used by the National Weather Service to issue watches, warnings and advisories. The software combines three legacy products into one system with the flexibility to message a variety of hazard types.

Danial Nietfeld, with Global Systems Laboratory, said the project was a major undertaking.

“It’s no small task to replace all three of our watch, warning and advisory systems with one new one but we’re really happy with this latest version,” said Nietfeld.

It’s built on a flexible software framework designed to allow for new science, policy, and technological improvements to be transformed into information that helps people make decisions about how to respond to protect themselves and their loved ones.

“Using Hazard Services is more intuitive, which allows my forecasters to issue warnings more rapidly, as well as giving them the ability to monitor and create multiple warnings simultaneously,” said Ben Herzog, the NWS Science and Operations Officer in the St. Louis forecast office.

The new system is getting good reviews. One forecaster in Pittsburgh said the system cut the time from deciding to issue a warning to actually issuing a warning from half a minute to 10 seconds.

Meteorologist Darren Leeds with WRSP-TV in Springfield said Illinois is currently in the heart of tornado season.

“April, May and June are typically our most active period of the year for tornadoes in the state of Illinois and that is going on the last 75 years of data,” said Leeds.

Leeds said Illinois has already had 43 tornadoes in 2025, so the state could easily surpass the monthly average of 57.