Déjà vu! As like last year, the first day of the first week of the experiment finds us with a developing severe weather event right at the start of the shift. With little time to get ready, we are having a compressed orientation schedule today so that we can begin our first Intensive Operations Period (IOP) as soon as possible.
A cold front is slowly moving through central Oklahoma, and storms are already firing, and severe, on a SW-NE line to the northwest of Norman. Storms are presently impacting the PAR, CASA, and LMA domains.
These are on the edge (actually outside) the SPC DY1 SLGT RISK area, and a severe thiunderstorm watch as just been issued to encopass the convection (although some of it is outside the box too!).
The plan is to train our two visiting forecasters (Steve Cobb, LUB – Lubbock, TX; Suzanne Fortin, EAX – Pleasant Hill, MO) on the WDSSII display and the PAR project, then train on CASA. After that, we will evaluate the situation, and if needed, will commence IOP immediately, splitting up the two forecasters on PAR and CASA, possibly to rotate between the two experiments half-way through. If the storms are already out of the CSAA domain by the start of the IOP, then we will do an LMA experiment, although we prefer to have the LMA data available at convective initiation, which is already passed.
Greg Stumpf (EWP Weekly Coordinator, 27 April – 1 May 2009)