HeatRisk did not disappear because one dashboard went down. The paper's earlier brief on turning HeatRisk into a doctor-patient checklist argued that heat guidance is most useful when it becomes household and clinical action.

That remains true during a tool outage. The CDC HeatRisk Dashboard redirected to a planned-maintenance page, telling users the dashboard and embedded visuals were currently down and inviting questions by email [2]. That is a real outage for that CDC interface.

But the National Weather Service HeatRisk page remained available. It describes HeatRisk as supplementary to official NWS heat watches, warnings, and advisories, and as guidance for decision makers and people sensitive to heat [1]. It also lists categories from 0 to 4: green for little to no risk, yellow for minor risk, orange for moderate, red for major, and magenta for extreme heat, with escalating impacts on sensitive people, health systems, industries, and infrastructure [1].

The distinction matters. A maintenance page is not a national absence of heat guidance. It is a reason to use the working NWS page until the CDC dashboard returns.

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago