The current summer heat waves in the United States can have a serious impact on overall public health and how your home and work function. Extreme heat exacerbates common health conditions, messes with your air conditioning, overheats phones and causes meltdowns for other tech. A new forecasting tool from the National Weather Service aims to make it easier to prepare for the many health threats involved with extreme heat. 

HeatRisk is a clickable map of the United States used to forecast extreme heat and assess the impact of that weather on public health. The threat assessment is built on a five-level system that's color-coded for severity, with green representing little to no risk and magenta representing the highest risk. A clickable map contains a seven-day forecast for anywhere in the United States, along with the color of the health threat level.

HeatRisk is free to use and worthwhile to learn for avoiding heat safety issues such as heatstroke. Here's how to use it.

Read more: You Can Track Heat Risks in Your Neighborhood With a CDC Tool. Here's How to Use It

What is HeatRisk?

National Weather Service's HeatRisk is a free index forecasting potential health threats due to extremely hot weather. Users can click on an interactive map of the United States and pull up a seven-day forecast of risk assessments. HeatRisk analyzes how unusual the heat is for the time of year and how long the heat is forecasted to last to determine if there is a higher risk of heat-related impacts as a result.

Read more: Super Common Health Conditions Can Make a Heat Wave More Dangerous: Here's How to Prepare

Threat colors

HeatRisk has five levels assessments, each with a different color that corresponds to the size of the health risk:

0  Green

According to the NWS tool, there is little to no risk involved with the forecasted heat at the green level.

1  Yellow

At the yellow level, there's a minor risk for those who are extremely sensitive to heat.

2  Orange

The orange level is considered to pose a moderate risk to the general public, with impacts possible in health systems and in heat-sensitive industries.

3 Red

Red means that there's a major risk to anyone without access to immediate cooling and hydration, with likely impacts to health systems and heat-sensitive industries.

4 Magenta

The most extreme level is magenta. It's both a rare occurrence and one that's of long duration, with no overnight relief, which has likely impacts not only to health systems and heat-sensitive industries but to infrastructure.

Read more: Wild Weather Ahead: Summer 2024 Could Be a Scorcher With Incoming Heat Wave

Other ways to track heat risks

Similar to NWS' HeatRisk, a CDC tool called HeatRisk Dashboard allows users to access a seven-day forecast to assess the potential health impact from extreme heat. 

Environmental Public Health Tracking Program's Data Explorer offers further HeatRisk information as well as assessment resources for COVID-19 and other illnesses.

Read more: Here's How to Keep Your Kitchen Cool (and Lower Your Energy Bill) During a Heatwave

Heat knows no borders

The summer of 2024 has been a scorcher in many parts of the country beginning in the early days of the season. While average temperatures in California haven't yet been as extreme as on the East Coast, experts say that there won't be many places that are safe from an elevated threat.

"As the climate continues to warm, most areas will be at an increased risk of some types of climate-linked extreme weather," Russell Vose, chief of the Monitoring and Assessment Branch at NOAA' National Centers for Environmental Information, told CNET's Katie Collins. "Perhaps the best example is extreme heat – it can occur anywhere."