Across the northeast, specifically in the Boston CWA, the primary threat today is damaging wind gusts. It might be beneficial, especially when there is only one hazard expected, to have an option for individual ProbSevere products (i.e., ProbHail and ProbWind) like ProbTornado.
That way the forecaster can easily look at the specific information that goes into each hazard rather than looking through a long list of information (as shown below):
There is an option to view a "ProbSevere Light", but it will still be beneficial to view all the information that goes into a specific hazard.
Issued a Severe Thunderstorm warning for the northern cell on a broken line of thunderstorms to the southwest of the KRAX radar. The Prob Severe model indicated 92% on ProbWind and 80% and ProbHail. The storm interacted with an outflow boundary and quickly intensified.
About 5-10 minutes after I issued the warning the cell weakened.
Another cell attempted to strengthen about 30 minutes after the issuance of the warning. The cell moved into the southern portion of my original warning box. Prob Severe briefly indicated wind probabilities around 80%, but it did not persist and continued to weaken thereafter. Seeing how quickly the first storm dissipated as well a quick drop in Prob Severe led me to not issue a new warning on the second cell.
The forecasters are spinning up on their WFOs of interest for the afternoon (Boston, MA and Raleigh, NC). The NOAA/CIMSS ProbSevere in 2017 has been improved based on feedback from previous EWP experiments. For 2017 EWP, forecasters are evaluating ProbSevere 'AllHazards' with specific probabilistic forecasts for severe hail, severe wind, and tornado.
As of mid afternoon, convection was rapidly intensifying in the Raleigh WFO. Figure 1 below shows AWIPS-2 screenshots of ProbSevere evolution between 1848 and 1936 UTC. The ProbSevere values increased steadily as thunderstorms developed along a low-level convergence zone and then really increased as an outflow boundary moving from SE to NW impacted the storms. The ProbSevere values were largely due to a wind threat (ProbWind), although close to 1936 UTC the ProbHail values increased markedly with precipitation core intensification (note jumps in MRMS MESH), perhaps owing to interactions with the outflow boundary. As of this writing severe reports have not been received.
Figure 1. KRAX 0.5 degree reflectivity and NOAA/CIMSS ProbSevere contours and readout. Valid 1848 - 1936 UTC 19 Jun 2017.
The EWP Raleigh WFO team are evaluating these storms and have issued experimental severe thunderstorm warnings.
I found creating a 4-panel of LAP data (below) useful to our mesoscale analysis. While the data was 2 hours old, we were still able to get a feel for the convective environment in the KRAX CWA. This will be a useful tool to supplement SPC mesoanalysis data since it utilizes observations from GOES-16 satellite rather than fully relying on a model. The updates are also a little more frequent than what is found on SPC. Including the data type helped to indicate some of the gradients and the reason for the pixelling of some of the data. This can give forecaster more confidence when its indicating clear or cloudy versus soley on the GFS, which could add uncertainty into the data. Other variables in LAP such as K Index and Showalter are not something I typically use, so I left these out of the 4-panel.
At first glance, the scale/labeling on the Data Type were confusing. One potential change would be to have wording such as partial cloudy (for cloudy retrieval) or something along those lines to better differentiate the categories.
Note: the time of the data was 2 hours old during analysis.
Big concern is with the northward propagating outflow boundary and its imminent convergence with the northern most band. (below)
Monitored initial ProbSevere numbers but feel this may be moot as the line is about to be modified by the outflow boundary.
Solely evaluating environment using satellite LAP data to get an idea of the the environment between the outflow and northern line. Only issue is the LAP data is almost 2 hours old and roughly evaluating the convective environment from it.
The LAP 4 panel (below) reveals an environment with plenty of moisture and instability to promote further development and propagation for convective activity.
Ideally would have liked to overlay radar on the LAP output to see development along gradients, but not possible due to the old LAP data.
This is a great SA tool to stay ahead of where you expect convective activity to continue or diminish.
My take away from this analysis is: Atmosphere is primed to support long lived convection along the SW-NW swath through the RAH CWA.
Will now monitor radar trends, particularly interested to see if sharp trend start occurring in the ProbSevere.
There are some inaccuracies with the derived motion winds when compared to surface observations. Here is an example with the 1000 mb wind speeds (near surface) and METARs:
Note the significant discrepancy in both speed and direction.
It also appears the clouds are moving southwest to northeast (opposite of the wind barbs).
In addition, I would suggest color-coding by pressure level rather than wind speed because wind barbs (by definition) already provide the wind speed information.
The Hazardous Weather Testbed 2017 GOES-R/JPSS Spring Experiment is underway in Norman, OK. The experiment will last for four total weeks (June 19, June 26, July 10, July 17) and include three National Weather Service forecasters and one broadcast meteorologist each week. Participants will have the opportunity to evaluate imagery and derived products from the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager which recently became available to forecasters in AWIPS. Additionally, HWT participants will be the first forecasters to evaluate the GLM lightning data in AWIPS. An updated ProbSevere Model will be demonstrated and include separate ProbWind, ProbTornado, and ProbHail probabilities. Finally, NUCAPS from JPSS will be demonstrated, including evaluation of the operational NUCAPS algorithm from Suomi-NPP, NUCAPS from MetOp A/B, and experimental NUCAPS product that is automatically modified in the low-levels.
Stay tuned to the blog for posts made by our participants and visiting scientists. Unfortunately, GLM data posts will not be available to the public due to the early testing stages of the data.
An energetic, negatively-tilted shortwave trough traversed the middle of the country last week, bringing several bouts of severe weather to the Great Plains. By visualizing the accumulation of the ProbSevere output (storm centroids ≥ 50% [pink boxes]), the NWS warnings (orange and red polygons), and storm reports (blue, green, and red circles), we see that the ProbSevere model handled the first event on October 4th quite well, at least qualitatively.
Figure 1: A toggle between the 12Z 10/4 ->12Z 10/5 accumulation of NWS warnings and reports, with overlaid ProbSevere centroids greater than or equal to 50%.
A very long-lived storm that approached the Norman, OK area produced numerous hail reports. It was first identified at 23:47 UTC, with a probability exceeding 60%, due to high effective bulk shear, MUCAPE, and strong satellite growth rates. The MESH was 0.24" and total flash rate was only 1 fl/min. After quick jumps in the MESH (to ~0.5") and the flash rate (to almost 20 fl/min), the probability exceeded 80%, and was promptly warned at 23:52 UTC. We can see a time series of the ProbSevere probability (thick red line) and constituent predictors in the time series below. Note that the satellite growth rates were both 'Strong', and expired a little after 02:00Z. We can also see when NWS warnings were valid and when severe weather was reported in the lower subplot.
Figure 2: Time series of ProbSevere and its predictors (top), and NWS severe weather warnings and severe weather reports (bottom). The axes on the right are associated with the time series on the top subplot, while the legend in the lower right is associated with the bottom subplot.
The stunning time lapse of this storm was captured by Jim Ladue (NOAA/NWS/WDTD) as it approached from the west. The range of this video is from about 23:52 UTC (when the storm was first warned) to nearly 01:00 UTC.
A second short-wave ejected through the Plains on October 6-7 (as Hurricane Matthew threatened the southeastern seaboard), bringing with it another bout of storms, and this time, numerous tornadoes. ProbSevere again handled most storms quite well, with few false alarms and a couple of missed wind reports.
Figure 3: A toggle between the 12Z 10/6->12Z 10/7 accumulation of NWS warnings and reports, with overlaid ProbSevere centroids greater than or equal to 50%.
We can see the evolution of the storms and associated warnings below, over Kansas, Oklahoma, and far northern Texas. The animation is from 18:30UTC to 00:00UTC every 10 minutes. The pre-frontal storms and those close to the triple-point (in north central KS) remain discrete longer than those which are forced by the cold front. The red, orange, and green polygons denote NWS tornado, severe thunderstorm, and flash flood warnings.
Figure 4: Animation of ProbSevere contours, NWS polygons, and MRMS MergedReflectivity from 20161006-18:30Z to 20161007-00:00Z .
A number storms formed in the early afternoon of September 22nd in response to forcing associated with the North American Monsoon over the Intermountain West region of the U.S. The image below shows the accumulations of NWS severe weather warnings, storm reports from SPC, and the centroids of ProbSevere objects attaining 50%+, at each time. Each accumulation is over the timeframe of 12Z on 9/22 to 12Z on 9/23. You can get a quick-look at how the model performed using these accumulations (the previous day accumulations are here). On this day, the NOAA/CIMSS ProbSevere model performed reasonably well, with high probabilities corresponding to numerous wind, hail and tornado reports. There were a couple of false alarms to the south east of the Great Salt Lake and a couple wind reports missed to its west and south.
Figure 1: Accumulations of ProbSevere objects, reports, and NWS warnings for 9/22/2016.
The storm that produced hail, wind, and the one the tornado reported initiated well to the southwest of Salt Lake City. The time series below of its probability and constituent predictors in ProbSevere demonstrates its evolution.
The probability of severe is the thick red line, with the scale on the left. The six predictors in ProbSevere have varying scales on the right. The NWP predictors of effective bulk shear and MUCAPE are the dashed black and brown lines, respectively. The MESH is solid orange, and the total lightning flash rate is solid green. The lifetime max normalized satellite growth rate and glaciate rate are depicted by the solid blue and dashed cyan lines, respectively. Both satellite growth rates use the blue scale on the right with nominal 'Weak', 'Mod.' (moderate), and 'Strong' designations.
Figure 2: Time series of ProbSevere predictors and severe probability value for a long-lived storm affecting the Salt Lake City metro area.
We see that the normalized satellite growth rate from GOES-West was strong at 18:50Z, while the probability of severe jumped to 15%. The jump in MESH in a high shear environment also helped to jump the probability up to 50% at 19:12Z. Increasing MESH and flash rate helped the probability climb to over 90% by 19:50Z. The first severe thunderstorm warning was issued at 20:09Z. Golfball-sized hail was observed at the Antelope Island Marina at 21:37Z. The tornado in the city of Ogden was reported at 21:45Z, and left thousands without power.
