The National Weather Service announced this week that it is shifting certain coverage responsibilities for Franklin County from the service’s Little Rock station to Tulsa.

The Tulsa station already provides severe weather warnings for Franklin County, along with more than 30 other counties in eastern Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas. With the change, which goes into effect Feb. 5, the Tulsa station will also serve as the source for hydrologic information for Franklin County.

Hydrologic information from the National Weather Service includes such things as a morning river-level report and flood warnings.

Tabitha Clarke, a hydrologist with the service’s Little Rock station, said Franklin County has long been included in her office’s hydrologicservice area because most of the county is within the Lower Arkansas River Basin, which runs through more than a dozen Arkansas counties in a band from Benton County in the northwest to Desha County in the Delta.

Clarke said that with the reassignment of Franklin County, there will now be 47 complete Arkansas counties in the Little Rock station’s hydrologic service area, plus the western half of Clay County that falls within the White River Basin. The Little Rock station issues forecasting and severe weather information for 45 Arkansas counties, Clarke said.

Michael Lacy, a forecaster with the Tulsa station, said weather radios that receive transmissions from the weather service won’t be affected by the change. But third-party vendors, such as Accuweather and CodeRED, which relay National WeatherService data to customers in specified geographic areas, may have to make changes to certain data search algorithms that rely on specific designators that tie data to regional offices, Lacy said.

National Weather Service station designators are similar to airport designators issued by the Federal Aviation Administration. The National Weather Service designator for Little Rock, for example, is LZK; Tulsa’s designator is TSA.

Fred Mullen, director of the Franklin County Office of Emergency Management, said the county recently renewed its annual contract with CodeRED, which costs county taxpayers about $11,000 a year. CodeRED provides severe weather alerts via text message, phone call and email to Franklin County residents who fall within the likely paths of such weather events, as well as give county administrators the ability to alert residents within narrowly targeted areas to other emergency situations.

CodeRED spokesman Stephanie Meyers said the company’s services to Franklin County will likely not be affected by the change because the weather-warning component of the service does not include hydrologicconditions. Meyers said 677 residents and 15 businesses in Franklin County have opted into the CodeRED emergency alert service, and 753 county residents have opted in to receive the weather warnings.

Mullen said that although he was pleased with his working relationship with the Little Rock station, consolidating meteorological forecasting and hydrologic services into one station may benefit the county.

“The one advantage is that Tulsa is more familiar with the general, overall day-to-day forecast for Franklin County,” Mullen said. “When you get all the people in the same room working on products for your county, I think it might go a little more quickly.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 12 on 01/17/2014