Today marked the first day of the EWP Spring Experiment in the Hazardous Weather Testbed in Norman, OK. This year, 5 NWS forecasters and 1 broadcast meteorologist will evaluate various GOES-R and JPSS algorithms, as well as Earth Networks total lightning products. Participants, working in pairs, will use the experimental products to issue area forecast discussions and severe thunderstorm/tornado warnings for their designated CWA. All of the products being demonstrated are available in AWIPS-II.
Much of the focus for the first day of the week was hands-on training for each of the products under evaluation. After some initial familiarization with AWIPS-II and procedure building, the various PI's worked with forecasters on how to interpret the products, and what to look for during the week. Forecasters also became familiar with saving images, and posting to the blog. By the end of the day, participants had already made several informative blog posts.
We began today's operations in the Topeka, Omaha, and Midland CWA's. As activity subsided in the Omaha CWA, that pair moved operations to the Wichita CWA. Participants were able to utilize all of the products today, including the PGLM total lightning from the West Texas LMA.
Tomorrow, we will start activities at 12:00 pm in the Dev Lab for the daily debrief before moving to the HWT for the 12:45 EFP briefing. Operations will likely take place in West Texas.
- Bill Line, SPC/HWT Satellite Liaison and Week 1 EWP Coordinator
Feedback from Daily Debrief:
GOES-R LAP products
- I looked at CAPE and TPW mostly
- DCAPE would be helpful to have, if possible
- The gradients in these fields were most helpful, not so much the absolute values.
NUCAPS
- I liked it and thought it was useful to have today. My office is in between RAOB sites, so it would be nice to have this additional environmental information.
- It would be nice to have automated surface modifications so that I don't have to waste time doing it myself. It is too time intensive, especially during warning operations
- I would like QC flags for each of the individual soundings to know which ones I should trust most.
GOES-R CI
- Today, I used it moreso after the fact
- There were a couple of cases where it worked well. One exampele was an 80% probability, and those cells blew up an hour or so later.
- In Topeka, there were a lot of thicker cirrus, so it was not effective.
- Further to the south in Oklahoma, it did well. 80% probabilities continued to develop into convection
- The display covered up too much of the imagery that I wanted to see.
ProbSevere
- I liked the readout, seeing the various fields was helpful.
- It might be a good idea to include Dual Pol fields in the future, specifically ZDR.
- In my situation, cells were pretty small, so I wish the contour had been a little thinner in this case as it covered up too much of the cell. I made it transparent so I could still see the cell.
Lightning Jump
- Of all the ENI lightning products, I found this to be most useful. It was easy to use, it broguht my attention to the relevant storms, and showed transitions in intensity.
- I had one situation where lightning increased rapidly with a newly developing storm, but no jump was recorded.
- It was pretty successful in indicating rapid intensification.
- I liked having it as a confidence booster.
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