Yesterday was the first day of spring. It seems appropriate to kick off spring with our first EWP Blog post of 2009.
We are in the process of planning for the 2009 EWP Spring Experiment a the Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) in Norman, OK. Once again, I will be the Operations Coordinator for the experiment, and Kevin Manross will be the IT Coordinator. We have a bit of work to do before our first shakedown week, which is less than a month away. Part of the work will include an update to the content on the EWP Web Page, so stay tuned for that in the coming weeks.
This is the third year for activities in the testbed at the National Weather Center. There will be four primary projects geared toward WFO applications, 1) an evaluation of experimental multiple-radar/sensor gridded severe weather algorithm products using the NSSL Warning Decision Support System II (WDSSII), 2) an evaluation of the 3D Lightning Mapping Arrays (LMA) in Central Oklahoma, Northern Alabama, the DC Metro Area, and possibly East-Central Florida, 3) an evaluation of networked 3-cm radars (CASA) in Central Oklahoma, and 4) an evaluation the phased array radar (PAR) in Norman. We expect the participants to be active in the LMA, CASA, and PAR experiments when severe weather is affecting those domains. The WDSSII multi-radar/sensor algorithm experiment is less dependent on local weather since we can access the needed radar and other data sets remotely for nearly anywhere in the U. S.
As like last year, operational activities will take place during the week Monday through Thursday (1-9 pm), and an end-of-week operations debriefing will be given on Friday (10am-1pm). We will be posting blog udpates at the beginning of each day to provide a summary of the severe weather forecast and our operations plans that day. We will also post end-of-day summaries and an end-of-week summary. Finally, as like last year, we hope to be blogging live during our Intensive Operations Periods (IOP).
Some may notice that our Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) experiment is on hold this spring. We received a lot of useful feedback last spring, and with that, we are planning to re-tool the experiment for 2010. The new experiment will take advantage of improved technology (AWIPS2 maturation, better ways to input the information, better ways to derive the grids), improved science (first steps at automated probabilistic guidance and warn-on-forecast), upscale activities (blending WFO short-fused warning information with longer term SPC watch and outlook information), and a social science component (a spectrum of users consuming the information in a variety of ways).
Stay tuned for more updates.
Greg Stumpf (EWP Operations Coordinator)