Daily Summary: Week 2, Day 1 (May 11, 2015)

New week, new participants, and a very different convective setup compared to last week. Today our forecasters were exposed to all that the EWP has to offer while operating in Wilmington, OH (ILN), Louisville, KY (LMK) and Houston, TX (HGX) ahead of a cold front that spanned from southern Michigan into central Texas. Forecasters quickly spun up on utilizing ProbSevere as a quick diagnostic tool to prioritize which storms to interrogate first. Forecasters were able to establish their first impressions, build procedures, and ask questions on the entire suite of products thrown at them. The established large squall line that dominated most of the country, while not helpful from the CI perspective, gave forecasters the ability to put the various diagnostic tools to work and compare outputs between mature and developing convection.

Overall, another "Day 1" in the books, here's hoping for some interesting cases this week (fingers crossed and prayers needed).

-Darrel Kingfield, CIMMS/NSSL Research Associate & Week 2 EWP Coordinator

Feedback from Daily Debrief
- Bill Line, SPC/HWT Satellite Liaison

GOES-R LAP
- PW fields compared well with observed soundings. This gave me a good feel for how the environment has changed since the morning soundings.
- It was helpful to see the three PW layers

NUCAPS
- I modified a profile near Houston, and CAPE was too high. There was a lot of cloud cover in the area, so it is hard to know if the profile was reliable.
- You can't just modify the surface values, you must modify the whole mixed layer, otherqise you get unrealistic lapse rates.
- I modified a sounding near Wilmington, and it matched well with the special 18z sounding (see blog post).
- There are no RAOB soundings in Huntsville, so I would like to use these more at home.
- I do not know if some of our forecasters (in Huntsville) will be comfortable with making the low-level modifications.
- Automating the modifications would be great, including the low-level mixing

GOES-R CI
- It seemed a little unsteady at times, with probabilities jumping up and down with no clear trends.
- We saw a few good cases, we had a lot of cu so it was picking up on a lot of the lower probabiltiies (blues). Ahead of the line, it hit on a storm that developed fast and later formed an OT
- The algorithm certainly suffers from the 15 min updates, as it is unable to "see" trends that are occurring between scans.

ProbSevere
- I like it, it gives an all tilts view without the all tilts, integrating the whole radar volume.
- Best use was to but it on the .5 degree elevation, watch trends in probsevere, and as the probabilities in a storm amp up, monitor that storm closer.
- When you have 30+ storms in your CWA, probsevere will highlight which storm you need to actually watch closer. Great situational awareness tool.
- The trends in the probabilities are easy to follow
- The trends seem real, with storms strengthening after increases in probabilities.
- I like the mouse-over in probsevere, and being able to see trends in the environmental fields as well.
- What else would you like to see in the readout?
--- I would like to see differentiation between hail and wind threats
--- Height of velocity or reflectivity core
--- Mid level convergence signatures, radial velocities, downdraft speed, descending reflectivity core. Basically, integrated volumetric calculations.

Lightning Jump
- It helps to visualize where the lightning is amping up, keying me in on the strengthening storms
- I stuck to the smallest scale (200 km^2)
- It did line up with ProbSevere, with increases correlating between the two.

PGLM
- FED is really cool stuff,. Being able to see where clusters of flashes are occurring is helpful. It made it easy to see strengthening updrafts.