Week 2 Debrief

While week 2 of the HWT Spring Experiment started out fairly quiet it certainly didn't end that way. Wednesday night's tornadoes in N. Texas ended up being the highlight of the demonstration so far and a lot of good feedback was collected from that event as well as the rest of the week. Check it out...

GOES-R CI
- 'On days where convection in more questionable it may be nice to have the ability to filter out the lower values to get rid of the confetti-like display, however on days where convective initiation is much more likely, those lower values provide some valuable information and help in keying in on particular growth.'
- 'Values of 57% or greater seemed to do fairly well on identifying initiation throughout the week.'

CTC
- 'The CTC is useful but does have trouble in areas of cirrus.'
- 'Most of the storms that developed did have a high POD, but also had some FAR.'
- 'In operations we're looking for which storms have potential. This is where the CTC would definitely be useful.'
- 'For situational awareness the CTC is a big thing. It identifies which storms to watch.'
- 'It would have been a better experience on Wednesday night if we'd had Rapid Scan Operations for GOES-13.'

Nearcast
- 'The CAPE field was good to compare to other CAPE fields though it can be hard to wrap your head around exactly what you're looking at and how it was computed.'
- 'The color scheme was a bit confusing. With the theta-E difference I'm used to thinking that green, yellow, and red values, are values to key in on, but in this case it was the darker blues and pinks.'
- 'The GOES-E and GOES-W images were definitely different, they didn't match, so I wasn't sure which one I should look at. It would definitely be useful to have a seamless overlap.'
- 'CAPE is conventionally what we're used to looking at, but the theta-E difference was also very useful.'
- 'Yesterday I looked at the theta-E and PW values... there were no high PW values [in west KS] and so it made sense why the storms there weren't growing. This information was very beneficial to have.'
- 'Then on Wednesday the storms in OK and TX formed right on the low-level and mid-level maximums of theta-E, so it did very well.'

RGB Airmass
- 'Yesterday the RGB showed showed drier, cooler air behind the convection which is what you would expect, but as the day went on you could see the moisture return to the area... because of this I kept my eye on what was going on there.'
- 'On Wednesday the dryline structure in OK and TX was very visible and we keyed in on this area.'
- The RGB gives you more information about the airmass source, it's composition, etc. It's very helpful information to have for situational awareness.'
- 'I liked the RGB as an overview, especially when you first sit down to see where airmasses are setting up. Though once you get into the nitty gritty of warning operations I didn't use it as much.'

Simulated Imagery
- 'We'd use it as a comparison to the actual IR to see what was influencing the model later.'
- 'It doesn't seem to handle anvils very well, but this may be a good thing because you could see where the storms were developing without the anvil getting in the way.'
- 'It's fairly remarkable what this imagery can do, giving you a satellite image so many hours in advance.'
- 'It did very well this past Tuesday in holding off on convective initiation up in the Western GL.'

PGLM
- 'Add the number or percentage of sensors currently working... for testing purposes it's crucial that we have this information so that we can use the product accurately.'
- 'Perhaps the 30 flashes/min threshold should be colored different so that it stands out more.'
- 'I used this product to identify which storms were starting to intensify and what cells I should key in on.'

Well that's a wrap for the week 2 debrief... but don't forget, our 'Tales from the Testbed' webinar will be beginning within thirty minutes and will cover the use of all of our experimental products during the N. Texas tornado event on Wednesday night. It should be a very interesting discussion!