Final Ops Day - LCH

 Started off the day with a cold front moving north towards the Louisiana coast. As discussed previously, GeoXO products don’t do as well with an already cloudy area, however we were able to clearly pick out where the cold front was over the gulf using the 5.15 imagery. Beyond this, I did not use this product again for ops.

Figure 1: GeoXI Imagery on top, GOES imagery on bottom

When looking at the Day Cloud Phase Distinction around 1830Z, I noticed the SZA imagery was much easier to view in terms of picking out cloud top textures vs the MesoAnywhere imagery. On the same topic of SZA, we got to see SZA really shine by looking at an area of bubbling convection that occurred around sunrise. The difference SZA made was just remarkable. In real time operations, I would’ve viewed the SZA imagery for at least 45 minutes, maybe longer, compared to what we typically use.

Figure 2: MesoAnywhere (left), SZA added (right)

Applied the Stoplight product in AWIPS today, really enjoyed using that with the Earth Networks lightning and GLM. I did observe some spatial difference between the desktop version and the version in AWIPS. I realize this could be because I approximated the range ring in the desktop viewer since there is no lat/lon input option.

Figure 3: Stoplight Desktop (left), Stoplight AWIPS (right) - 1 minute apart timestamped 18:49 and 18:50 Z, respectively

I also observed that the Stoplight expanded in coverage once storms got stronger, which increased my confidence in using this product to assist decision markers. There was a substantial jump in lightning activity highlighted by all of the lightning products, and Stoplight’s footprint expanded in response.

Figure 4: 18:41Z (left), 19:11Z (right)

LightningCast also did a great job picking up lightning potential before seeing evidence of cloud top cooling.

Figure 5: LightningCast probabilities

Finally, there were numerous cirrus clouds/anvil debris over our CWA, so we did have a more difficult timing utilizing some of the OCTANE products, but I did want to highlight that the CTC product detected areas of cooling along a boundary that was pushing away from the complex of storms into an area not obscured with anvil debris. CTC also showed the core areas of the storm where more rapid cooling was occurring.

Figure 6: OCTANE CONUS Cloud Top Cooling

-simoom

Thursday HWT …the last operational day…

FYI: The image above shows my LightningCast forecast setup on my AWIPS workstation at NWS Pueblo. All Ltg data plots in the upper left, and the lightningcast is in the upper right. I prefer lightningcast as an image (vs contours), as the image shows ALL of the probabilities.

Today we are tasked with both IDSS and Warnings for the Austin TX area. I have been doing warnings while my colleague Nick has been doing DSS (2 sites). Once again Lena picked two excellent sites as the strongest of the day went right over the 2 DSS sites. As the storm approached the first DSS site, it intensified, and I decided to issue a warning based on subtle cloud top cooling, the gradient with the storm and the MRMS trends in hail size. At the time I issued the warning a 1 inch hail report came in.

Late yesterday, Kevin was able to put Stoplight in the AWIPS instances. During luchbreak today, I was able to create a procedure which married the ltg stoplight product with LightngCast. We used this today for our DSS. As mentioned earlier, Nick was taking care of the IDSS so I did not look at the ltg data as much as I wanted to. Below is a loop of the data and the storm we were warning for….

Image above…the married “ltg cast” and “ltg stoplight” (upper left panel).The marginal severe storm (vcnty Austin)  is in the lower right image. I really like the fact that we can marry the two lightning products into one (unfortunately, this can only be done cleanly with AWIPS, although it may be doable within the GR environment (but would be really cluttered))

Just some thoughts…A lot of the ltg data above is based primarily off of the GLM. The GLM has an exaggerated footprint of 8 x 8 km. Hopefully, with the new ltg mapper which will eventually come on line in several years will have a smaller footprint. Based on the way things are now, We are likely “overwarning” for the lightning threat when we do DSS based off of  ltg stoplight and LightningCast.

Some more thoughts, with the HWT ending tomorrow, the most obvious product that needs to be put into operations in the SZA sat pix products. THE SZA has the biggest bang for the buck and should be easily do-able (but I am no AWIPS software expert). The lightning products (Ltgcast and Stoplight) are also very valuable tools, but need to be simplified as these tools are not ready for public consumption (even though they are public facing). The OCTANE products are impressive, but need alot of work before they are placed into AWIPS (The OCTANE site on the CIRA website is the place to go to see this data the best.

Here are some suggestions on making things a bit easier for the forecasters for the next HWT:

Have IDSS parameters defined ahead of time, i.e., ‘For IDSS point A, wind criteria is 40 mph, any lightning, any hail. Let us know if any of these parameters get within 10 miles of my IDSS Site. Once the weather threat is 10 miles outside my circle, let me know”. In a nutshell, pretend you are the emergency manager for that site.

Set up AWIPS so it defaults with the maps of the CWAs, cities, county names already plotted. Make sure the density and magnifications are appropriate.

A 4 panel radar display of R/SRM would help. Set this up for all radars that will be used on this day. See below for a good display setup

I think it would be better if the teams were either doing IDSS or Warnings, but not both at once. That way we can work together and learn (bounce ideas off each other in realtime). If one is doing IDSS and the other is doing warnings we really can't share knowledge amongst ourselves (we are too focused on our separate responsibilities).

Some last second things….we noticed that ltg cast was having issues of not detecting lightning in Colorado….

 -Mesovortex

Lightning Stoplight in AWIPS

While utilizing stoplight for IDSS activities. I noticed a few mapping errors in the AWIPs version. The first example comes from a lightning strike detected by ground-based networks underneath the anvil ahead of the storm. Stoplight correctly highlighted this strike, however on the AWIPS display it highlighted the adjacent grid (Figure 1). The strike occurred just northwest of McDade.

Figure 1: ENTLN lightning plot with lightning stoplight and lightningcast (contoured).

While comparing the CAVE lightning stoplight with the webviewer, it appeared as if they did not match one another. Below is an example of what was seen while viewing the CAVE version (figure 2) versus what was seen on the web viewer (figure 3). The webviewer indicated that the radius of concern had been lightning free for 30 minutes, whereas the cave version held on to some for longer.

Figure 2) AWIPS lightning stoplight valid at 2018z.

Figure 3) Lightning stoplight webviewer at 2018z.

 -WxBoi

Cirrus over I-10

Cold Front, Cirrus, Anvils: Lake Charles, LA

Today was a very marginal day as a majority of the CWA was covered in cirrus and then later anvils from nearby thunderstorms. This inhibited much of the solar heating potential with the exception of a small corridor from Lake Charles to Lafayette along I-10. The thermodynamics was not impressive across the area with only 1000 to 2000 j/kg of CAPE. Much of the convective initiation relied on a weak cold front and a sea breeze. There were some thunderstorm complexes that had moved through the area which brought lightning concerns to our two DSS points. Towards the end of the afternoon we were finally seeing convective initiation along the cold front.

With clouds contaminating many of the satellite products, today was mainly focused on lightning cast, lightning stoplight, and seeing how they interact with each other. We found some issues with the stoplight product today. The stoplight product was putting an active grid box that was not co-located with the lightning strike that reported from the lightning detection system. In the image below there is a small purple cross outside of the lone red box.

Final thoughts:

Every product we worked with this week has potential to make an impact. From extending daylight rgb products using a solar zenith adjustment, to using lightning cast and lightning stoplight to help make DSS decisions. OCTANE is a massive improvement for helping to forecast the state of convection. While there are limiting factors like clouds, overall the product could quickly make an impact diagnosing convection and being able to see how correct the models are handling the shear profile. The 0.91 and 5.95 products when operational could be used as ground truth in order to identify the boundaries, and being able to compare that with the models will help with getting those first few storms correct.

 -Blizzard

Overview: Week 1, Day 4

10 AM

Day 4 kicked off with another debrief session, with considerable focus on LightningCast and Lightning Stoplight for decision support. Near the end of the operations period yesterday we got the Lightning Stoplight tool into the HWT's AWIPS-II instances (thanks to Justin, Jonny, Roger, Kris, and the rest of the Stoplight team for the hard work to get that done!). We talked about what products in AWIPS-II you could display with it, and some forecasters preferred to have the lightning information (GLM, ENTLN) while others didn't. I'm hoping another day with DSS will better inform forecasters of these products, and using OCTANE and Synthetic GXI imagery in marginal/messy environments.

Picking our WFO locations was a bit easier today, but it was unfortunately from how limited the areas for convection were. A cold front had washed out much of the moisture and instability down to the Gulf Coast, leaving us with marginal convection from the 13 Z SPC outlook. You know it's a meager setup when we had to request an ABI MESO domain for our area, and we were glad the SAB approved. We settled for Lake Charles, LA (LCH) and returned to San Antonio (EWX) in hopes of getting some semi-discrete convection in each. Both offices were again given two DSS events and encouraged to use the LightningCast Super Dashboards.

1PM

Operations kicked off and forecasters spent a good bit of time playing with LightningCast and the Lightning Stoplight tool together, and providing feedback to both sets of developers. Working with forecasters and developers, we made a few 'flavors' of the Stoplight tool in AWIPS by modifying the colorbar. Here's the descriptions from the animation below:

• Top left is default
• Top right colors the flashes in the last minute as dark red
• Bottom left changes the green to blue
• Bottom right colors the flashes in the last minute as pink followed by a red, orange, yellow scheme

Forecasters had a positive response to the top right panel, and said that coloring the 0-1 minute flashes from GLM and ENTLN dark red in some ways removed the need to overlay those products in AWIPS, simplifying their display. I saved this display off as a procedure and hope to show future weeks and get their feedback too.

3 PM

The Synthetic GXI folks decided to show the forecasters WVT data from the METEOSAT-12 FCI, since it has the 0.91 µm band that GXI plans to add. Features such as fronts and low level moisture boundaries were identified and discussed.

4PM

We found an interesting case of CI near the Lake Charles, LA CWA, with anvil debris from upstream convection obscuring the convection from visible and infrared satellite imagery. The OCTANE cloud top cooling product had a hard time showing cooling until the updraft produced its first lightning. LightningCast v2 and v1 were also compared for their performance in this challenging scenario.

5PM
To end the day I went back and made another animation of the SZA product. This time I got sunrise over the CONUS (thanks Justin!) and showed some early morning convection across central TX, with a different cloud types and layers.

Even in the MRGL, we still had a full day!

Lots of Lightning

Got a little more time in with both LightningCast and Stoplight today being over RLX’s area. Learned today that you can add range rings in the Stoplight product. Kelley walked us through how to make adjustments to our display, such as changing the basemap and adding overlays if preferred. Feedback: One thing I noticed while using Stoplight today was I changed tabs for a little bit, came back and noticed that most of the pixels had disappeared. However when I zoomed out some, they re-appeared. I gave an early “all clear” because of this. Granted lightning was definitely on the downward trend, but once I zoomed out and the pixel repopulated, it repopulated within the 10-mile radius. Not sure what happened there if it was user error or what. Also not sure if this is something that can be added or not, but the ability to input a lat/lon would be awesome!

LightningCast: LightningCast did a really great job today, especially V2 with the ABI+MRMS. We observed that this version detected lightning much earlier over eastern Pennsylvania compared to V1. Our storms were more low-topped with much less instability, and we saw LightningCast pick up on the probabilities very quickly even when there was hardly a radar echo. The biggest feedback from today’s session was a lack of GLM data appearing in the Super Dashboard even though GLM data was directly over our DSS event in AWIPS. Lena explained that there are different GLM sources, and since my group was using density, that’s why it wasn’t showing up in the dashboard (at least I think that was the reason?) Regardless, we shared the feedback that it would be nice if those things matched to prevent confusion for the forecaster. On the plus side - I learned even more about GLM today!

OCTANE- Since we were in an area with lower instability, Jason recommended viewing CONUS OCTANE Speed as shear was good in the area. I was amazed at how well this product highlighted the convection. At a quiet point, we jumped down to Texas to observe the firing supercells in the SW, and noticed OCTANE had cooling cloud tops around 5 minutes before lightning cast picked up on it, so that was also an interesting observation. I continue to really, really enjoy using the CTC product with LightningCast overlaid. I would integrate this today into my normal every day DSS procedures in AWIPS if I could.

Figure 1: OCTANE CONUS Speed over WFO RLX

SZA played a huge role today, too, in helping me see the clouds at a higher brightness for a longer time than I normally would! The images below are just down right impressive. I don’t know any forecaster who wouldn’t want more time to have better visualization on satellite.

Figure 2: Pictured left: OCTANE Meso (no SZA), pictured right: OCTANE CONUS (with SZA) at the same time of 22:37Z

I had a harder time using GXI imagery today given all of the cloud cover already in place at the start of ops. It was difficult to make out areas of moisture on the 0.91. However I was still able to pick up on better areas of moisture with the 5.15

Figure 3: GXI imagery at 18Z focusing over WFO RLX

Just to add: Graphic created today for DSSm posted in Slack.

 -simoom

Overview: Week 1, Day 3

 10AM

Day three kicked off with a loaded discussion, with OCTANE, Synthetic GXI Imagery, and the Lightning Stoplight Tool taking center stage. One interesting topic came from the presentation of Lightning Stoplight, and how to interpret regions with no data next to pixels in the 0-10 minute range (red). Would a site manager interpret that area as 'safe'? This also led into a discussion on how forecasters would present these data to partners, with most in the group stating that they wouldn't feel comfortable giving the Lightning Stoplight or LightningCast tools to EMs without considerable on-site guidance or training.

The forecast discussion was split four ways between Texas, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Colorado. We ended up going to the San Antonio, TX (EWX) office for a supercell and large hail threat, and the Charleston, WV (RLX) office for widely scattered convection with a marginal wind and hail threat. Forecast groups were also now tasked with two mock-DSS events, forcing them to monitor multiple events on the LightningCast superdashboard product. The Lightning Stoplight tool was not in AWIPS until 21 Z, but forecasters were advised to use the web display from NASA SPoRT.

1PM

I started the day by going west to Hawaii to collect SZA imagery at sunrise from GOES-West and sharing these with the forecasters. How much more 'usable' information can SZA provide compared the traditional imagery, and how much sooner if possible?

4 PM

After several discussion regarding DSS, LightningCast, and how to interpret the Synthetic GeoXO Imagery, we were able to get the Lightning Stoplight product into our AWIPS-II! Forecasters stated in the morning discussions they want to immediately union these data with LightningCast, and some procedures were made to help them out at the beginning of ops tomorrow. I created an animation of the Lightning Stoplight that includes GLM, ENTLN flashes, and ABI Clean-IR imagery. I set the opacity of the Lightning Stoplight to 80% so the colors stand out, but you can still see some detail underneath. We'll see how well the forecasters like this information and if they make any new displays. This animation shows the dissipation of a thunderstorm on the western side of the scene, and you can see the loss of GLM FED data, while the Lightning Stoplight product changes colors and shrinks in size to indicate a decreasing lightning hazard.

The day ended with a quick look at sea-breeze thunderstorms in eastern Cuba for the SZA imagery. Its interesting to see the low clouds and how long they stay present in the SZA's modified DCPD RGB. We'll see how the forecasters like this in the morning.

Kevin

Big Ol’ Storms, Amazing Satellite Products!

 Today’s focus for my group was over WFO FWD where discrete supercells developed, eventually congealing into a more linear storm mode. Being on the DSS desk today, I primarily used lightning products today, though I did peep at a few others. I wanted to take a moment to highlight the GeoXO 5.15/0.91 products for very clearly defining a moisture gradient over northeast TX that would eventually go on to be our focus point for CI.

Figure 1: WV/WVT/Itob/VISob Compare highlighting distinct moist/dry boundary

LightingCast:

Provided DSS using LightningCast V2 overlaid with OCTANE CONUS CTC. I really like using the products together as the increasing LightningCast probs nudge me to either contact or not contact an EM. Overall, I thought the product did very well. I did notice something odd in the dashboard that I spoke with the developer about - instances of GLM flashes were observed at a time there was a downward trend with LightningCast. Figure attached below.

Figure 2: LightningCast V2 vs V1

For documentation, here was the primary procedure I used today to make decisions:

Figure 3: OCTANE CONUS CTC w/ LightningCast (yellow circle is 8-mile radius DSS event)

Using all of the above mentioned products, here was a CWA graphic I put together:

Figure 4: DSS graphic

Feedback for Day 2

LightningCast: For the Dashboard, I feel like V2 did a better job than V1. The amount of variables being measured is a little confusing, and over time, I noticed I was more just looking at a trend rather than all of the different variables.

Stoplight: Though I never got to give the all clear for my DSS event, Stoplight matched up very well with LightningCast and radar trends.

OCTANE: Made some progress in terms of understanding some of the OCTANE products today, thank you for answering all of my questions, Jason! I really liked that we had 2 live weather events to compare the difference in the wind profiles with OCTANE. Yesterday, we observed a lot of greenish hues, indicative of stronger low-level flow. That element was a bit more lacking in FWD today, and the imagery corroborated that with more blue hues. Jason also showed us examples of cloud top divergence, with more blue/green colors indicating deceleration. After getting to know these products a little better today, I feel less overwhelmed by it.

GeoXO: I continue to be very impressed with this product's moisture and boundary detection. The example I shared above was very impressive and mostly lined up with the 00Z HRRR.

SZA: Did not look at SZA today

-simoom

Tuesdays HWT

Main issue today was to do IDSS near Delhi MS. We were using lightning cast and lightning stoplight. We were also issued a few warnings. Fortunately, we had a storm move over the region so we were quite busy for at least an hour or so.

Our team created some loops of the data. A long loop of GLM and ltg prob is below …

The blinking circle was our DSS site. Lena was our “emergency manager” for the day.

We had thorough conversations with Lena and Kevin regarding using the tow lightning products in operations. We agreed that the products are very useful, but would not work all that well to send these products directly to our partners.

Note that we had a thorough conversation on the slack channel and you can follow the “blow by blow” discussions there.

We also had a great conversation with Lena regarding how we interact with our emergency managers.

Regarding Lightncast, I believe that the planview products are good. I prefer looking at the imagery like this though >>>>

Note that the data probabilities on the awips image above go from 0% to 100 percent.  Why is it important to show the data this way instead of contours? The reason is you can see the VERY beginning of when the ltg probs start to show up. Using contours, you have to wait until the 10% prob shows up. Note that I do not have sat pix imagery overlaid, The reason why I do this with AWIPS is I can have the sat pix data opened up in another panel and use the cursor to read the data. Also the contours (or the image for that matter) would get “lost” (or buried) within the colors of the sat pix imagery.

We used the Lightning Stoplight product today. This was helpful in letting us know when the last flash occurred in the 10, 20 and 30 increment time frame. However I am hesitant with sharing this directly with the EMs.

I envision that the Stoplight product and the LightningCast product will be married in the future, and this will make these two products more useful.

I can not say enough how valuable the lightningcast product is. Prior to this we did not have a good idea when lightning would be a threat, and would have to carefully watch radar data and do cross sections or monitor to -10C level. With lightningcast, you have the probabilities calculated for you in real time every minute (mesosector) or every 5 minutes for CONUS.(However waiting 5 minutes is wayyyyyyyy toooooo lonnnnnnnnnnnnng.

We talked about the SZA product. This is a no brainer and this satellite product should be implemented operationally as soon as possible. Being able to see the detail in the sat pix data towards sunset is priceless.

-Mesovortex

Lightning Stoplight Tool in GR Analyst

Figure 1: Example image of GR2 Analyst software depicting radar reflectivity, the Lightning Stoplight Tool, and convective warning polygons for an ongoing severe weather outbreak on April 27th, 2026.

The newest version of the Lightning Stoplight Tool incorporating both space- and ground-based lightning observations is now available to view in the commonly used radar software GR2 Analyst. This visual guide to the spatial coverage and recency of lightning strikes is created using flashes observed by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instruments and the Earth Networks Total Lightning Network (ENTLN) antennae, and publicly-accessible placefiles show the lightning strikes observed between these two detection systems over the previous 30 minutes. The red, yellow, and green shadings represent the amount of time since lightning flashes were observed over that area, representing lightning strikes within the last 10, 20, and 30 minutes, respectively. Radar reflectivity from the KLSX radar near Saint Louis, MO is overlaid on top of these shaded areas in Figure 1 above. This Stoplight product highlights how much broader of an area is impacted by increasing lightning threats from convective storms than just what is covered by radar returns or even convective warning polygons, especially in areas trailing or perpendicular to the direction of the predominant storm motion (towards the northeast). 

Figure 2: Side-by-side comparison of the Lightning Stoplight Tool in GR2 Analyst with the same data sets at the same time, with the Lightning Stoplight Tool overlaid on top of radar reflectivity on the left and vice versa on the right. The inset in the top-center (white box) represents the mouse-over text showing how long ago individual lightning flashes were observed.

Placefiles which can be easily ingested by the GR2 Analyst software are especially useful for NWS forecasters because many Weather Forecast Offices prominently display radar data using this software during operations. While the entire polygons created within the placefiles cannot produce mouse-over text over the entire area of the polygon, it can be formatted to include this information when the mouse cursor is positioned over the edges or boundaries of the individual polygons representing either individual flashes or the time since any flash was observed over a certain area within a certain period of time. On the left side of Figure 2 above, the red, yellow, and green polygons produced as part of the Lightning Stoplight placefiles are overlaid on top of the radar reflectivity data, whereas the radar reflectivity data is overlaid on top of the Lightning Stoplight polygons in the right side. This contrast shows how a large area of risk for nearby lightning strikes exists beyond just the stronger, more convective storms towards the south. The broader, larger red polygons showing lightning observed within the last 10 minutes branch far north of the main line of convective thunderstorms into the large stratiform region covering much of east-central Indiana and western Ohio.

In a DSS environment as an operational forecaster, this Lightning Stoplight Tool highlights these often overlooked areas where a distinct lightning safety threat persists despite no longer being affected by more traditional types of severe weather, like tornadoes or large hailstones. Additionally, having access to this Lightning Stoplight Tool within GR2 Analyst allows forecasters who may be dispatched onsite to provide timely weather information showcasing the spatial coverage and close proximity of lightning strikes even though they may be far from their typical AWIPS workstations. Progress is being made to get this stoplight imagery into AWIPS as well, with similar imagery as with GR2 Analyst expected to be created later this week.

-Dusty

Overview: Week 1, Day 1

9AM

Welcome to the testbed! Day 1 is usually when forecasters are just getting their feet wet with the products, but today they may get thrown into the deep end. The 13Z SPC Outlook features a Moderate Risk and large Enhanced-Slight Risk through the Mississippi Valley, driven by a 15% CIG2 threat. Forecasters will mostly be getting familiar with products and using AWIPS in cloud instances, but hopefully they will have plenty of good storms to observe today! Unfortunately we're having issues getting the Lighting Stoplight tool into AWIPS, and it was only available online today.

1PM

We localized to Paducah, KY (PAH) and St. Louis, MO (LSX) with the expectation that semi-discrete thunderstorms would develop during our operations period. Unfortunately thunderstorms took too long to develop for PAH, but there was plenty of thunderstorms to the west across Missouri and north towards Illinois and Indiana.

We observed low level dry air from the Synthetic GXI data from a front and dry line that passed through western Oklahoma. It was interesting to compare the synthetic data from WVT and low(est) level water vapor at 5.15 µm against the observations from GOES-R in the split window difference and visible imagery at 0.64 µm. Some questions for the forecasters included how easy it was to identify features and boundaries in this clear-cut and more strongly forced scenario.

4PM

Later in the day our group also had a discussion about extremely large flashes as detected by GLM and the ground networks, and how (or if) they could be interpreted by products such as LightingCast or the Lighting Stoplight tool. Could LightningCast add lower probability contours? Would those contours add to noise and too many false alarms? How sensitive should users be to the appearance of probabilities?

6PM

To end the day, I saved off some animations of the SZA products. I tried adjust the Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB recipe when including the Channel 2 and 5 SZA bands, so we will see how forecasters react to that product.

Kevin