ProbSevere over the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, 11 June 2014

We lost the NOAA/CIMSS ProbSevere feed at the National Weather Sevice (NWS) Milwaukee/Sullivan, Wisconsin (MKX) at 1742 UTC 11 June 2014. This was due to a communications failure at the National Weather Service Central Region Headquarters. So, we could not use and save the AWIPS II radar imagery with the CIMSS ProbSevere product.

However, we were able to save the images below from the ProbSevere website. These images were of convection in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast U.S. from the early afternoon hours on 11 June 2014. We could not zoom in on the individual storms to get actual values from the ProbSevere product, so I'll just give some general trends on how it performed. Scattered convection developed across the region in a moist, unstable environment with 1000 to 2000 J/kg of MLCAPE, and 0 to 6 km shear of 20 to 30 knots. 

Convection developed fairly rapidly, and the ProbSevere values increased quickly as well. They seemed to show the rapid intensification of these storms well. Several Severe Thunderstorm Warnings were issued (yellow polygons) after the ProbSevere values increased rapidly. The ProbSevere product seemed to show some lead time to the issuance of the Severe Thunderstorm Warning products.

I have used the ProbSevere product in a couple of convective events in 2014 across the MKX forecast area. It was a useful situational awareness tool when convection first developed, until the anvils overspread the area. After then, it seemed to show more false alarms.

I would like to see an option to show the probability of tornadoes, severe hail, severe wind and flash flooding, if possible. Anything to help with situational awareness with flash flooding situations would be very helpful. It would also be good to try and keep the readout from the ProbSevere product from getting too cluttered with information. The color scale may need to be modified to one that has more colors at the higher end of the ProbSevere spectrum. This would help with seeing how high the value actually is.

This was a helpful learning experience, and look forward to more in the future!

Thanks,

JJW, Forecaster

NWS Milwaukee/Sullivan, WI

Contour colors: Blue - 1-9%; Cyan - 10-29%; Green - 30-49%; Orange -  50-69%; Red - 70-89%; Pink - 90-100%.
Polygons: Yellow - severe thunderstorm warning; Red - tornado warning; Purple - special marine warning.