outage forecasting for restoration contractors
You have a finite number of crews, a finite number of trucks, and only so much windshield time. This 1–5 day outage forecast ranks where restoration work is actually likely to land — so you position for the work instead of guessing at it. It's a forecast of where work is likely, not a probability or a customer count.
The outlook
How to read it
Each county gets a priority tier from the forecast. The percentages are how often counties at that rank actually had outages in the validation data — historical fact, not a forecast probability. The signal weakens with lead time, so detail coarsens from counties (near-term) to regions (far out).
The forecast is driven by the evolving path of wind and rain. The weather model tracks each system as it develops and moves across the map — day 1, day 2, day 3 — and this model reads that forecast county by county, so the priority shifts with the storm. As a system moves toward a region, the counties in its way light up ahead of time; as it passes, they cool down. You're not seeing a static snapshot — you're seeing where the work is headed, because the forecast underneath it is tracking exactly that.
That's the number that should change how you operate. Restoration work isn't spread evenly — in validation, the top 10% of storm-days held ~88% of all restoration hours. Chasing every little event burns crews and miles on work that was never there. The win is the opposite of reactive: know which handful of storms actually matter, and put everything into those. This tells you which ones.
Register and we'll notify you when the forecast flags elevated outage work in your region — so you're positioning while everyone else is still watching the news. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.