BOU: Playing with 4 Panel Displays

Forecaster comments from EWP blog...

Initially, I had the current radar in the upper left panel and the GOES East and GOES West CAPE, Theta-E diff and PW diff combined into a 4-Panel. Out of curiosity, I decided to load the OUNWRF 1km AGL Derived Radar Reflectivity into the upper right panel. It was kind of interesting to see how the derived reflectivity moved into the more favorable areas of CAPE, Theta-e diff low-mid lvls, and PW diff.

The GOES East / GOES West products are a bit rough to read, but its a nice ‘generalization’.

VISIT Blog: "1-Minute GOES Imagery over Colorado Severe Storms"

Great blog post from Dan Lindsey at CIRA regarding the 1-minute Super-Rapid Scan Operations called for GOES-15 (GOES-West) yesterday.  Example of how higher temporal resolution imagery (like that which will be available from GOES-R's Advanced Baseline Imager) can be used by forecasters.

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/training/visit/blog/index.php/2012/06/07/1-minute-goes-imagery-over-colorado-severe-storms/

BOU view of the Nearcast

Forecaster comments from EWP blog...

View of the GOES-R Nearcast values of of CAPE and thetae difference.  In this particular case BOU was located on the GOES E and W boundaries and had two values shown for each parameter. In this example, the E satellite showed more unstable values for the same point (in comparison to the west). As pointed out, this could be correct since each satellite may be looking at different effective levels. Regardless, these products showed the best axis of instability along the eastern 1/3 of CO (along the front range), with the greatest instability maintaining itself across NE CO well past 00Z.

LWX: Watching for lightning…and seeing confetti

Forecaster comments from EWP blog...

We’ve started out watching the LWX CWA in the hopes of getting a feel for the DC Lightning Mapping Array.  The equipment, as well as the storms, are not cooperating however.  So, we have been monitoring the CI products in the hopes of seeing some more significant storms pop up.  The UAH CI algorithm has been treating us to a “confetti” pattern such as in the upper left on the IR image, and the lower right on the visible.  This kind of appearance is not surprising given the relative cool pool of air in place across the northeast U.S.  We have gotten a couple of minor UW CI CTC hits that developed into a couple of decent showers on the LWX 88D, which can be seen in the upper right panel. So far though, not a lot of lightning data to look at, and our domain may be shifting soon.

BOU: Another busy day for Traffic Management folks!

Forecaster comments from EWP blog...

Another day…same problem…convection firing up in the vicinity of some major jet routes and arrival gates in the DEN airspace. That means traffic headaches not only for controllers in Denver air space…but for people in ZKC, ZFW, ZAB…etc. You get the idea.

Once again, I’m able to test out the Sim Sat products. Already some activity firing up along the front range….but had I come in at 0530 (for a normal shift), I could have used the Sim Sat products to provide TMU with some good information for their planning purposes. Figure 1, below, illustrates the 19z Sim Sat compared to the 19z IR (lower left). You can see that the Sim Sat products have under-forecast the convection – one of the major limitations of the tool. However – the general location and trends are highlighted very well. With the exception of the development over BOU.

CYS: Getting started

Forecaster comments from EWP blog...

We have big storms as we sit. Limited 3D-VAR domain and data today. -20C is about 17.5kt as we sat down and have 55dBZ over 25kft out the door.

Cooling was earlier with our storms with about 10-15 minutes heads up for 1 or 2 of them.

EWP daily debrief 6/7

Below are some of the feedback we collected during today's debrief of the EWP forecasters...

SATCAST / UW Cloud-top Cooling
- "We had quite an issue with missing data... it wouldn't update for 30 minutes and by that point we were already behind with things." -  This is due to the 3 hourly 30-minute full disk scans that currently plague GOES data.
- "We had a -33 C / 15 mins signal in the CTC and nothing happened." - See this blog post
- "Once we tried to zoom in on a local scale and it (SATCAST) looked a little offset from the visible data."
- "Once you're in warning mode they're not of much value... you should really try to look at these things more prior to warning operations... you would need more resources (personnel) to look at these products when you're trying to issue warnings."
- "They worked fine for me until we started getting anvil cirrus overhead."

Nearcast
- The CAPE product lined up well with some of the analysis data and where the more significant storms ended up forming.

Simulated Satellite
- "It did a really good job yesterday, especially because it was run the day before... it would be nice if we had a 12 UTC run as well."
- There is interest in running this on more models.
- Sky grids in GFE would be incredibly useful.
- "They look seductive because they resemble the actual data so well."

PGLM
- "There was a 20 minute lead time between the first IC and the first CG."
- "It would be nice to see a 5- or 15-minute accumulation of the lightning data as well... when we used the 1-minute data it was hard to go back in time very far because you needed a lot of frames and that got fairly frustrating."

Overall / Training
- "I'm concerned that the bandwidth issue is going to be difficult to deal with... I want to get some of these satellite products back to the office to show people, but I have a hard enough time just loading a satellite image loop."

CYS: Loved the Sim Sat Products!

Forecaster comments from EWP blog...

I am very pleased with how well the Sim Sat products performed today. This event was the first time I was able to fully utilize these tools! Based on the training…the sim sat products tended to under-do the convection…here, you can see that the sim sat OVER did some of the convection…most notably over BOU.

Figure 1: Sim Sat Forecast vs Real Time

Had I used this application in my forecast, TMU would have been very happy with me! This would have been fantastic for planning/re-routing purposes.

CYS: Awesome CI rate…going for lead time!

Forecaster comments from EWP blog...

Was starting to think that anvil contamination would limit use of the CI products by this point.  However, the algorithm put out a nice little surprise.  The cooling rate tops out at -33C/15 min…which is likely the highest anyone has seen so far!  Went ahead and quickly issued a warning on it…going for good lead time…and took a chance and called for 2 inch diameter hail.  Let’s see what happens!

CYS: Severe storms now popping…and the SimSat products pretty much nailed it

Forecaster comments from EWP blog...

Starting to issue some warnings now in the CYS CWA for some brewing supercells.  Took a moment to reevaluate the simulated satellite products.  Note in particular the top two panels…the simsat is on the left, the actual GOES IR image is on the right.  The model did an excellent job in generating convection in southeast Wyoming.  The timing was maybe a touch off, but this is certainly acceptable for such a highly detailed guidance product which ran the previous night!