Daily Debriefing 5/9/13

Yesterday evening (2-10pm) turned out to be a busy shift, our focus on the OUN and LUB CWAs. Multiple warnings were issued and a lot of good feedback was collected. We even got a bonus and were able to watch a storm roll right overhead from the NWC's observation deck!

Really neat lightning (and hail) show aside, here's some of the forecaster comments from our shift:

Cloud Top Cooling
- 'There was a signal early that rapidly cooled to -26C and I did issue a warning off of that.'
- 'Because of the jet streak moving through central Texas and then the cirrus blowoff from the development of various convective cells, the product struggled due to the cloud contamination.'
- 'Radar can't look through mountains... in the same manner, satellite can't look through clouds.' ...from a product PI

GOES-R CI
- The GOES-R CI had the same struggle at the the CTC. Because of the cirrus contamination forecasters weren't able to utilize it aside from a few cells early on.

PGLM and associated lighting applications
- 'There were some pretty impressive lightning jumps in storms that eventually produced strong winds.'
- 'The lightning jumps did seem to be associated with storm top divergence, storm top growth... so there was a jump on the strengthening of the updraft and the storm itself.'
- 'I liked the idea of the tracking tool, but it was difficult to use with the storms that were barely moving.   It became a very labor intensive task.'
- Forecasters also noted that the number of strikes in the OKLMA network were fewer than anticipated for the strength of the storms. However, after some exploration it was discovered that not all of the LMA sensors were functional and this limited the amount of flashes detected.

Today's focus area will be slightly further south, covering San Angelo and Fort Worth, TX with possible coverage of OUN later in the afternoon. Cloud cover is already widespread over a broad area in this region, but we are hopeful for some clearing and development on the back end where the GOES-R CI and the CTC can be utilized again.