Prior to our "Tales from the Testbed" webinar that begins at noon, we had the opportunity to sit down with the visiting forecasters and discuss their experiences over the past week regarding individual products and overall training/demonstration effectiveness.
SATCAST / UW Cloud-top Cooling
- "We were looking at the CI/CTC quite often and there were some areas that were quite ahead of time where enhanced updraft potential was taking place." (Thursday's event)
- "We saw a lot of the SATCAST along the boundary, but not as much of the CTC... which did make sense because we did see a lot of enhanced cu, but not a lot of really strong storms." (Thursday's event)
- "It (SATCAST) really helped to focus in on the area with the lower probability threshold and then once it transitioned into 50 or above, that's when the strong storms started to develop... very consistently too."
- "I never felt like during the experiment that it (SATCAST) was giving me too much information, like too many false alarms or anything... the strength of signal really helped correspond to what was happening."
- "It (SATCAST) was a great move to go with the strength of signal... it provided information instead of the yes or no... you can compare it to your level of confidence in terms of development."
- "It was definitely important to stress to look at the environment first with these products, especially with the SATCAST product which helped me handle any false alarms."
- "It was nice to match up the CTC with things like the 3D-VAR updraft strength."
- "I only say one high confidence false alarm over the whole week... other than that, when you saw red, you could count on it seeing 30 dBZ or higher." (SATCAST)
- Would you like to see a completely data-fused product with model data or would it be helpful to provide the product by itself as well? "If you could provide both, that would be really useful because sometimes the model is completely wrong."
- Any other potential uses for this (SATCAST) product? "Boundary identifier definitely... you can really pick out areas where instability is increasing."
- "With the CTC, the storm was generally already ongoing... we could use the two products to somehow put an initial lower probability."
- Would you like to see any big changes in the SATCAST product? "I would like to see some studies done on the threshold on the signal strengths." "I would like to see a readout of the background fields."
- "It (CI) enhances the total observations network... I would like to play with it some more."
- Did you like the color scheme for SATCAST? "I liked it... it worked great."
- "I love that product (CTC)... yeah you can look at the IR imagery and figure it out, but why do that extra work... have the algorithm do it for you. It really helped as a situational awareness tool."
- "I issued a warning on the CTC... obviously you have be aware of the situation and the environment."
- Was it obvious every time it happened? "I think it was enough, you could overlay it on visible or radar and then use the accumulated to get a longer picture of what has happened."
- "I'd like to see a longer accumulation product (CTC)... sometimes it was a much longer period between the initial growth before it became strong."
- "Maybe an alarm of a CTC threshold like -10 or -20 C/15 min would be useful."
Nearcast
- "It was picking up a surge of theta-e that was over the eastern-most counties over our CWA, which pointed out an area of enhanced tornadic threat later in the day." (Thursday's event)
- "Near storm environment... specifically the theta-e difference product... you can see the instability extending all the way off shore... you could tell that storm would keep going and going."
- A lot of the time you would have missing data, but specifically with the isolated storms you could really get an idea of where the instability would be."
- "Useful in finding the cold front and relatively stable air... you could see the cold airmass moving in."
- "If there weren't clouds moving in... I wonder if we would have seen cooler more stable air moving in at the 500mb level that would have suppressed convection. It would have been nice to use the different levels more often, but there was a lot going on."
- "We added the synthetic IR to the 4-panel with the nearcast theta-a difference and levels to get an overall picture of what could evolve."
- "Instead of seeing the holes from cloud cover... maybe you could add in some model data to fill the gaps."
Simulated Satellite
- "The simulated imagery really helped depict boundaries where storms would form, and also had a good handle on the mode of the convection." (Thursday's event)
- "Maintaining situational awareness, getting the impression that the short wave was moving in and the moisture coming in to the area, it was great to see how the environment was changing."
- "Potential for convective initiation was brought out... makes those spots look hot on a quick large scale glance"
- "I can easily compare WRF IR to observed IR... it was really simple to do."
Overall / Training
- "Between the satellite stuff and the 3D-VAR, you're really getting a good start on warn-on-forecast... putting it all together would really be very useful."
- "I really felt like I was a warning forecaster during the event... and that is key to a good experiment."
- "The cheat sheets you made for each of the products, how to load them and use them, were really useful."
- A few of the forecasters have asked us to provide them with either a website or some way to bring some of the products into their operations... specifically the simulated satellite imagery and band differences data, as well as the SATCAST and UW cloud-top cooling products. POC information will be provided to the forecasters for each of the products within an end of the week thank you email.
- "Having the forecasters blog really helps you all see if we are 'getting it'."
- How much should we interrupt you during operations? Could you have used more conversation from the PIs? "I thought it was perfect"
- "Not having the pressure to have to 'catch every warning' and having the freedom to test things was very useful in getting some quality feedback."
- "The addition of the extra day on Monday was very helpful in setting up a rhythm."
- Was the pace of the training good? Was it too much? "I thought it was fine... you covered all the products." "I think it's important to emphasize the first training shift at the WFO to come in up to speed... the more emphasis the better... If everyone could get that done ahead of time you could really hit the ground running when you came in."
- Did the job sheets introduce the products well? "They were great."
- "The format you put the WES case in was very compatible to the various PCs we had available... I know I'm going to go back and give a seminar on how we should package our training."
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