The 6th Southwest Hydrometeorology Symposium, sponsored by the National Weather Service COMET program, will be held at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. Preliminary programs, registration, hotel, and general information will be posted on the symposium website (http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/psr/pns/symposium.php). Papers for this conference are solicited on themes including: 1) Effects of drought, climate variability, and long-term climate change on water resources in the upper and lower Colorado River Basin; 2) Use and utility of the NOAA drought products among the water resource, emergency management, agricultural, natural ecosystem, government agencies, and/or policy maker communities; 3) Water resources from monitoring snow pack and run-off to managing reservoirs, groundwater, stream flow, and water conservation actions, including users of the NOAA products such as water intensive industries, private water companies, and/or urban water providers; 4) Severe weather in arid climates: fire weather, heat waves/excessive heat, dust storms, flash floods, severe thunderstorms, lightning, including how they are forecast, how the forecasts and warnings are disseminated by the media and others, and how they are used by first responders, outdoor activity venues, the aviation community, developers, agricultural sector, and the public. The discussion will also look at vulnerability of communities to extreme weather events, and the needs of these stakeholders for warnings and forecasts; 5) Climate Services – what will NOAA’s new Climate Service provide to the local community, what are the intersections, overlaps and gaps in current climate service? Case studies of events in any of these topic areas are encouraged. In addition to short (10 minute) papers, followed by group/panel discussions, we invite posters on any of the above topics for an extended evening poster session on Tuesday September 27th. To accommodate the discussions and interaction between both providers and users of NOAA products, some papers may be presented in poster form. Please indicate whether your paper can be presented as a poster, and also indicate whether you would like to participate in a panel discussion after your paper presentation. Please submit your abstract electronically (as a document or pdf) to the Symposium organizers (Nancy Selover Selover@asu.edu, Doug Green Doug.Green@noaa.gov) by 15 August 2011. There is no abstract fee, and the symposium registration is $20, (no registration fee for students). Include your name, e-mail address, paper title, topic area, whether or not it could be a poster, and whether or not you are willing to participate in a panel discussion after your paper. Authors of accepted presentations will be notified via e-mail by August 22, 2011. All extended abstracts are to be submitted electronically and will be available on-line via the Web site. Instructions for formatting extended abstracts will be posted on the Web site. Manuscripts (up to 3MB) must be submitted electronically by 29 August 2011. We plan to make all abstracts, extended abstracts and presentations available on the Web site at no cost.