During the week of April 27th I participated in the Experimental Warning Program (EWP) component of the Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) at the National Weather Center (NWC) located in Norman, Oklahoma. The HWT is located on the 2nd floor of the NWC nestled in between WFO OUN and SPC, and was established in 2006 to foster collaboration between NSSL scientists and operational meteorologists. There are two components of the HWT, the EWP which I participated, and the Experimental Forecast Program (EFP), which focuses upon the evaluating forecast tools that could improve severe weather operations in the 1-12 hour forecast period. Typically, the two programs are run in tandem; however, this year the EFP was delayed, thus only EWP was run during the week I was at the HWT.
From my experiences, I cannot deny how valuable PAR and CASA will be to warning operations. The temporal resolution of the data alone, will allow forecasters to make warning decision 5-10 minutes sooner than they could with the 88D. The adaptive scan strategies of these radar systems will allow us to interrogate more critical storms more effectively, also enhancing our warning decision process. My greatest concern about these data is our ability to process the volumes of data that will accompany these new technologies, and hopefully human factors engineering and/or fuzzy logic systems will help in that regard. Similar to the integration of WSR-88D, we will have to modify our operations to fully exploit these data – but I can tell you at this time what the optimal set-up would be.
The derived MRMS products also show value, but until they can be fully integrated into AWIPS in real-time, they will not be as effective in the warning decision process. In addition, the products need to be in a format that compliments base data analysis, but doesn’t detract from its interrogation. Yes, they are available via Google Maps in real-time, but to make these products more viable to NWS warning forecasters, they should look into making these products viewable in GR2 Analyst, which outside of AWIPS is the software of choice to interrogate base radar data. The CIMMS/NSSL researchers seemed open to exploring this possibility in the near term, until then, we’ll have to rely on viewing the data in Google Maps.
As I was driving home, and in the week that followed my trip to Norman, I had time to ponder my experiences at EWP, plus review input from some of the other evaluators. I was struck by the number of SOOs and warning experts that had been tapped to evaluated the various systems at EWP, and that raised some concern in me. When you have higher performing, multi-tasking and more analytical evaluators – are you really designing a system that will benefit everyone? Of course warning “experts” are going to be able to process and interrogate data more quickly, they have high skill in this area, but what about the people who struggle in this arena. I think it would behoove the folks at EWP to have a more varied population evaluate their products and system, as I feel it would build a more robust system that could be used effectively by all and exploited by the experts.
Finally, I should add that the NWC is quite a place to behold, and I was impressed how eager the researchers from NSSL and OU’s School of Meteorology were to work with and listen to operational meteorologist’s concerns. I enjoyed my week at EWP, not only because I was able to get a glimpse of things to come, but because I was able to experience the synergy of the NWC. I hope others get a chance to experience the energy that surrounds the place in a future opportunity.
Suzanne Fortin (NWS Pleasant Hill MO – 2009 Week 1 Evaluator)