Daily Summary: Week 2, Day 3

Today, we began operations in the Wilmington, OH and Nashville, TN CWA’s. Once again, convection along the cold front was ongoing from the previous evening. The folks in Wilmington were able to utilize many of the products as there was some clearing earlier in the period. The participants in Nashville were able to view the PGLM Total Lightning data from the Huntsville LMA, though activity was not that great, and many of the other products were not usable given the extensive cloud cover. As the lightning activity subsided, the Nashville crew moved to the Pittsburgh LMA, where new storms were beginning to initiate, and the forecasters could utilize more of the demonstrations products. The group in Wilmington would later move to the Charleston, WV CWA as convection spread eastward, before ending up in the Cleveland CWA.

Tomorrow, we will start activities at 12:30 in the Dev Lab for the daily debrief before moving to the HWT for the EFP briefing. The day looks to be similar to today, as the cold front continues to shift towards the coast. One group will likely focus activities in the DC LMA area, while the other group may work in southeast OK as that area may see some convective development from the clear sky.

Feedback:

Simulated Satellite Imagery

• I looked at it early in the day, and it was quite accurate. THis gave me confidence in the forecast throughout the rest of the day
• I was impressed with how it simulated features in the IR and WV. It looked really good.

NearCast Model

• There was a lot of early cloud cover which limited its use. But it did have moisture and nice stabilit yriding up along the cold front, as I would have expected.

GOES-R CI

• At night it became useless. I do not see myself using it then, but I rally like it during the day
• It was too cloudy much of the day for it to be useful
• There were many low probabilities showing up within and along the edge of a broad stratus deck where convection was certainly not going to develop.

Prob Severe

• In Huntsville, it didn't show very high probs for the low-topped convection (QLCS, ~25K ft.). Mainly wind damage reports with this. I still think that it is best used in hail situations
• there was a supercell in Ohio that it only gave 5-10% probs. This was very low-topped.

Tracking Tool

• It was cool to use with the supercell to show reflectivity trends, then a slow decrease in magnitude
• I think these trends would be helpful
• I also looked at SRM; it could be helpful to see trends in that, maybe giving you confidence in tornadic situations
• I would like to manually input the melting level and track reflectivity with that displayed

- Bill Line, GOES-R SPC/HWT Satellite Liaison and Week 2 EWP Coordinator