The final week of the HWT 2016 GOES-R/JPSS Spring Experiment has begun! The GOES-R/JPSS Proving Ground/User Readiness meeting is taking place here in the National Weather Center in Norman also this week. Attendees to that meeting will be visiting the HWT to get a first hand look at the evaluations currently taking place. Day 1 of the final week was a busy one, with severe convection, including confirmed tornadoes, near Norman. Below are some photos from the day, along with feedback from our daily debrief.
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| Photo of large tornado that formed near Sulphur, OK (south of Norman) courtesy of our HWT/EWP Operations Coordinator, Gabe Garfield. |
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| Looking at a tornado-warned storm east of Norman from the roof of the NWC. Radar image and warning are in figure to right. |
LAP
- I like looknig at the LPW, especially in the lowest level, because you could see where the moisture transport was. It gives you more information than just TPW. I see this being useful for seeing moisture return from the GoM, as different flow regimes often bring moisture up into a region.
- I thought LPW was helpful. I appreciated that the mid and upper layers showed drying aloft, with greater moisture at the low-levels.
- It was nice to see the dry line depicted in the low layer LPW field.
- CAPE values matched up with 18z Norman sounding, and SPC mesoanalysis.
CI
- In Norman CWA, it highlighted the main area of convective development in the western part of the CWA. It was a little slow, however, as I could see the devleopment in visible imagery by the time the CI algorithm . targeted it.
- The strongest storm in the Norman CWA that produced a large tornado had a 70% severe CI on it.
- If a product performs well over time, I have confidence to use it later.
- In the NW part of the Norman CWA, a line of severe storms had a severe CI over 50 prior to development
- In FWD, an area had high CI well ahead of initiation, and severe CI around 50. This was higher than the rest of the region, so it attracted our attention. This area ended up developing and becoming severe.
- This is a product that, if you can trust it, was good in the situation we had yesterday. I was paying so much attention to our one tornadic storm. Then to the south, there was a cluster of high CI that brought my attention down there. Without CI, I would not have looked down there as early as I did.
- I can see this being useful in the southeast US. With pulse severe thunderstorms and large CWA's, storms could develop anywhere on the map in a given day. This product helps a forecaster with where to look next.
ProbSevere
- I noticed large jumps in ProbSevere simultaneous to storms increasing in strength, so it didn't give us much of an increase in lead-time yesterday. We tended to see large jumps at about the same time that we normally would have issued based off of standard data. For us it increased confidence in these warning decisions.
- I think it is especially helpful for the first cells of the day. ProbSevere jumped into the 60s. It was helpful for marginal cells at the beginning of the shift that were on the edge of becoming severe.
- Later, cells were obviously severe based on other datasets, so it wasn't as helpful. But still, it was great for confidence, especially watching trends in the probabilities. It is also helpful to see the predictor output.
- I like this product a lot, I am already using it in my office (RAH)
- I was most confident to issue at the 80% threshold
- Yesterday in FWD, the rapid increases in probabilities helped. The rate of change of probsevere triggered a severe tstorm warning. I wonder if a rate of change of probsevere prob could be a product on its own.
- It was very helpful to see why the probabiltiies changed via the predictors.
- With the first cell, we issued a warning when we saw probs quickly go from 45 to 65. No lightning wit hthis storm.
- In busy situations, it is helpful for discriminating storms that are more likely severe vs those that weren't. I don't remember a high probsevere yesterday that did not warrent a warning.
SRSOR
- Seeing OTs at this temporal resolution was helpful; it allowed us to figure which storms had the strongest updrafts at any given moment.
- For initial development along the dryline, convection went up very fast. Without 1-min data, we wouldn't have been able to recognize so soon that convective initiation was occurring.
- This validate dthe CI product. I'd see soemthing on CI and then go to 1-min data to validate it.
- 1-min imagery changes the game for interrogating storms before they are seen on radar.
- Having 1-min data available to see things earlier allowed me to get the alert out sooner.
- Seeing stuff go up earlier was the greatest benefit to me. I have an earlier idea of where the strong updrafts were.
SRSOR winds
- In FWD, I noticed a difference between the RAP analysis and satellite-derived winds. The RAP had significant LL convergence that was not apparent in the SRSOR winds. Nothing ever developed in that area. My initial discussion mentioned this, and how the satellite-winds made me doubt that covnection would develop since I was not seeing convergence. Also, not much directional shear.
Lightning Jump
- There was a 26-sigma jump on the tornado-producing cell prior to it producing a tornado, but we had already warned on it.
- I prefer the ProbSevere contour display over the LJ blog display.
NUCAPS
- If we hadn't had the 18Z RAOB, it would have been useful. 18Z soundings told us what we needed. 20Z NUCAPS matched up well.
- NUCAPS didn't resolve the CAP in the FWD CWA; this was a downfall. The 18Z FWD radiosonde showed that the CAP was actually still present.
- Having NUCAPS 1 hour earlier would have helped with the severe weather in the Norman CWA.
- The parameters matched up well with other data sources after I correct it.
- We have NUCAPS set up in our office. We've had success in using it to determine elevated convective potential, seeing moisture coming in around 600-700 mb, closed lows over CA.
- In warning siutations, having to put so much effort into modifying the sounding is a deal breaker.
- I think if you have a mesoanalysis on shift, they would look at NUCAPS during severe weather operations, and provide updates to the radar operators.
- For me, the most useful aspect of NUCAPS was for checking instability. Those values looked on par yesterday, telling us that the environment would support severe storms.
- I would be fine with having an error line visible in NSHARP with NUCAPS. Training on this would be important.
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