Due to a history of tornadoes, weather preparedness is a way of life in North Alabama. We all have our weather radios tuned and ready to wake us up in the middle of the night if a tornado is coming. We have a sheltering plan in place, whether it be an internal room without windows or a dedicated storm shelter. Most importantly, we have deeply held convictions about who our favorite local weatherperson is. ¹

However, when it comes to winter weather, you only need to walk down the milk and bread aisles at a local grocery store to see how poorly we prepare. In the south, where the weather is warm, cities find it hard to justify the cost of equipment needed to keep roads drivable in icy conditions, so a winter weather event can truly shut the city down.

As we are a few days out from a possible multi-day winter storm, I started thinking about how to stay informed and learned about the National Weather Service’s Huntsville Daily SitRep.² Because this information comes straight from the NWS, it is not sensationalized in the way social media or news coverage often is.

Let’s take a look at how we can use this report, along with an LLM, to keep informed about this upcoming weather event. We’ll be using ChatGPT for this example, but this should work with any provider of LLM services.

What Do We Actually Care About

The Daily SitRep serves all of North Alabama. To do so, the document is 16 information-dense slides. Rather than reading through the entire report, let’s consider what information would actually be practical if we were building a personalized version. My personal list would be:

• What will be the impact to road conditions? - I want to know how likely I am to be stuck indoors and by what time we need to make any preparations that require driving.³
• What is the risk of experiencing power outages? - If we expect long-term power outages, I would want to make sure to have as many sources of power ready as possible.
• What type of precipitation do we expect? - If it is snow, then the kids will want to play in it, meaning we might want to pick up anything in the yard before the ground is covered.⁴

For this information to be useful, I want to understand how these factors progress over the full timeline of the event. This helps inform when preparation is needed and how long those preparations must last.

For practical purposes, I only care about conditions in Athens, Alabama. If I want to see how the situation is unfolding across North Alabama for my own interest, there are better ways to do it such as the news or social media.

Lastly, I want to understand the level of confidence the NWS has in this forecast. If the event is farther out, I may want to simply remain aware, but not yet take action.

Turning Constraints into a Prompt

To summarize the SitRep, we need to provide the PDF to the LLM and describe how we want the information presented. We can do this by giving the LLM the link to the PDF, which it can retrieve on its own. That leaves us with a prompt like the following:

You are reviewing a Daily Situation Report (SitRep) PDF covering weather impacts across North Alabama, found at https://www.weather.gov/media/hun/DSSBuilder/DailySitRep.pdf.

This report contains many slides and a large amount of detail, but I do not want a full or general summary. Instead, create a concise, practical summary focused only on conditions in Athens, Alabama, written to help a household make decisions.

Focus on answering these questions:

• How will road conditions be affected? Explain when driving may become difficult or unsafe, and identify any key times by which errands or preparations that require driving should be completed.
• What is the risk of power outages? Describe how likely outages are, whether they may be short or prolonged, and what factors (such as wind, ice, or snow) contribute to that risk.
• What type of precipitation is expected? Clarify whether we should expect rain, snow, ice, or a mix, and note any impacts that matter at home (such as snow accumulation affecting outdoor items or children playing).

Present this information as it changes over time, showing how conditions are expected to progress from the beginning of the event through its end. Group events by day rather than by category, giving me a day-to-day timeline of what to expect from this storm.

Also explain the National Weather Service’s confidence level in this forecast. If confidence is low or the event is still far out, note that awareness may be sufficient rather than immediate action.

Write clearly and concisely, using plain language.

Do not summarize slide-by-slide, and do not include regional details unless they directly affect Athens, AL.

The prompt does not need to be nearly this formal. This is a long, detailed prompt and it would be tedious to write this by hand. One of the best tricks for authoring prompts is getting ChatGPT to do it for you. In order to build this prompt, I told ChatGPT to Help me build a prompt based on the following criteria for use in summarizing a SitRep PDF, and then pasted in the contents of the section about where we determined what we care about.

An Example SitRep Summary

Here is the first-pass result ChatGPT produces when we enter the prompt above, without any refinements:⁵

Wednesday (Today)

Precipitation:

• Showers likely later afternoon into evening; mainly rain now with highs near mid-50s. 

Roads:

• Wet roads this evening; expect slippery conditions but typical rain hazards only.
• No ice/snow yet.

Power Outage Risk: None today.

Household Actions (Today):

• Run errands now rather than this afternoon/evening if you want to avoid rain.

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Thursday

Precipitation:

• Morning has slight chance of showers; otherwise mostly dry/cloudy and warmer. 

Roads:

• Normal conditions (dry to wet) during the day; no winter travel issues anticipated.

Power Outage Risk: None.

Household Actions:

• Good day for errands and prep (groceries, fuel, etc.) before winter precipitation arrives late.

Friday

Precipitation:

• Mostly cloudy with slight chance of showers (cooler). 

Saturday Night Onset:

• Wintry mix begins after midnight Friday night — freezing rain first, mixed with sleet/snow. 

Roads (Friday):

• Generally fine during the day; plan to finish driving before sunset.
• After midnight Friday, travel may become dangerous as freezing rain starts.

Power Outage Risk:

• Still low Friday day; rising overnight into early Saturday as ice begins.

Household Actions:

• If you need to travel for weekend prep, do it Friday daytime.

• Charge phones, check supplies before midnight.

Saturday

Precipitation:

• Widespread wintry mix all day — freezing rain, snow, sleet. 

Roads:

• Travel very hazardous to impossible. Ice and snow accumulation will make roads slick. Avoid driving except emergencies.
• Bridges/overpasses likely icy.

Power Outage Risk: Elevated.

• Freezing rain through the day adds ice on powerlines/trees, increasing outage risk.
• SitRep notes medium chance of ice > 0.25” and possible outages. 

Household Actions:

• Stay home; keep emergency supplies handy (flashlights, blankets).

• Avoid non-essential travel.

Saturday Night — Sunday

Precipitation:

• Continued freezing rain turning heavier, then likely still freezing rain Sunday morning. 

Roads:

• Extremely unsafe due to heavy ice; stay off roads.
• If travel is unavoidable, VERY slow speeds and emergency kit in car.

Power Outage Risk:

• Higher risk especially if ice continues accumulating; outages could be prolonged where ice load is heavy.
• Tree limbs and lines under ice weight are vulnerable. 

Household Actions:

• Keep refrigerators closed, limit heat loss.

• Gather extra water and shelf meals if power outages occur.

Sunday Night — Monday

Cold Hazard:

• After precipitation ends, dangerously cold wind chills are expected — single digits to below zero. 

Roads:

• Any moisture still on roads will be solid ice in early mornings; treat like winter driving.

Power Outage Risk:

• If outages occur, cold increases danger — have alternate heat sources and check on vulnerable people/pets.

Forecast Confidence

NWS Confidence:

• High in overall impacts from this storm system (ice and cold). 
• Moderate uncertainty on exact amounts of snow/ice, especially start times. 
• Meaning: You should prepare now — conditions could be worse than expected.

Quick Household Checklist

• Before Friday night: errands, fuel, medications, food.
• Friday night onward: avoid travel, stay stocked on essentials.
• Power prep: charge devices, flashlights, blankets, check generators/heat sources.
• Cold weather safety: coat pets, protect pipes, avoid outside if possible.

This is a great start to summarizing this information! Still, I see room to better align this output with what I personally want from the report:

• I don’t need the weather report for today or tomorrow. I only need the report while the winter weather event is active.
• I realize only after reading the report that I don’t actually need a day-to-day assessment of the risk of a power outage. I only need to understand the risk of a power outage happening during the storm at any point as my preparations don’t change based on the day-to-day risk.
• I don’t want the household actions. I will manage these myself based on what the report gives.
• I like that it includes a short summary at the end. I would like to have a “bottom line up front” type summary to begin the report.

In the same chat window, you can just paste in these exact refinements, or whatever other customizations you want, and the LLM will give you a new report. You can iterate on these refinements until you are content with the format of the report.

Tracking SitRep Changes

Weather forecasts are fluid, and what is predicted today can change tomorrow. I would like to understand day-to-day the updates that the NWS is sending out, but I don’t want to have to remember to do this daily, manually re-running the prompt and these refinements.

ChatGPT has a feature called Tasks that solves this problem by running a prompt on a schedule and notifying you of the results. ⁶ These notifications are configurable and can come in the form of email, mobile push notifications, or desktop browser notifications.

I want this report as early as possible in the day. Based on today’s release time of 6:13 AM, let’s assume the report is available daily by 7 AM. In our current chat window, ChatGPT already understands what we want from this report, so setting up a new task is simple. We just tell it exactly what we want:

The PDF will update daily. Can you run this report daily on the updated PDF at 7AM?

Now, we will get notifications each day as the weather event unfolds without the need to check manually.

Try it out!

If this seems beneficial to you, try it out for yourself! Ideas for further customizations could include the following. For any of these customizations, simply tell the LLM what you want and it will make the appropriate adjustments.

• Further customization of the report format - I like the detailed timeline, but maybe you only want to know when roads are expected to be impassable.
• Reporting on closures - I am fortunate to work from home, but many will still need to drive in these conditions. For those, point the LLM to another reliable source of information.
• News reporting - news outlets serve an important function to tell the story of what is happening in the area beyond the data. Those stories can supplement the report with stories of how the weather event is impacting the Tennessee Valley.

We prepare best for weather events when we have actionable information. I hope this AI-enabled workflow can help you get exactly the information you need to prepare for these types of winter weather events.

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Footnotes

1. Since Jason Simpson stopped serving the Tennessee Valley, I stick with Brad Travis. ↩

2. The link here is live and will update daily. The report that was used today is stored here. ↩

3. Without a milk sandwich, what even is the point of a winter storm? ↩

4. i.e. Dog Poop ↩

5. This was generated using the GPT 5.2 model. ↩

6. At the time of this publication, the Tasks feature is only available on paid ChatGPT plans. ↩