Today was an active day for observing CI across the country today. The initiation over the North East this morning had people scurrying to get AFD's, projected areas of interest, and survey's out in time to observe the storms. Hey, that is the point of testing experimental data, to see if it works.
For SATCAST, we picked up the first of the big convective storms moving across New York this morning with about 15-20 minutes of lead time. The UWCI product picked it up as well, just one satellite image later. Unfortunately, the storms started to fire, so time spent looking at CI products pretty much ended right then. Watching online using the research display, SATCAST looked to be doing pretty well picking out the new convection south of the line as it developed.
Watching again this afternoon over the dryline area over Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, SATCAST was putting up sporadic flags of CI in the late afternoon. In the early ones, the environment was not letting much grow, so the early flags didn't verify. SATCAST and UWCI put up flags simultaneously on the storm that became the large system that kept forecasters busy in the Wichita area. Before the forecasters switched their displays, SATCAST was flagging the convection that appeared about 20-30 minutes later in the southwest corner of Texas moving from LUB forecaster area to the OUN area.
Of course, the forecasters are now focused on tracking storms, putting out warnings, and using the other experimental products such as 3DVAR, the PGLM Lighting information, and the UW cloud top cooling rates, overshooting tops, and thermal couplet data to help them do it. This week's experience with the tools presented, how they were used, as well as interpreted, has provided both the forecasters and scientist with new ways to play with the data. SATCAST has performed well this week, maybe not perfect in some people's eyes, but well. It will be interesting to see where all of the tools presented go from here.
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