My participation in the EWP spring experiment was from a somewhat different perspective than most of the other evaluators, observers, and participants. Currently, I am a doctoral student at Florida State University studying CG and IC lightning. We make extensive use of the WDSS software, and I certainly advocate the multi-sensor, multi-radar approach that has been transferred to operations within WDSS. My current research seeks to quantify IC and CG patterns for comparison with these multi-sensor parameters in order to better diagnose storm severity. Therefore, I was extremely eager to observe the operational application of these products, and also how they may be improved.

The HWT-EWP is an ideal forum for forecasters and researchers to share insights. It provides forecasters with the opportunity to share insights into the development of the next generation of operational tools and allows researchers to more clearly define the forecaster’s needs. The following paragraphs detail some general comments and impressions.

The forecasters seemed reluctant to move away from their more familiar base products during severe weather analysis. This leads to one of the more significant points mentioned during our Day 5 debrief. The products that we create must be nearly bug free before the forecasters use them, because first impressions are very important and the tools may not receive a second look if they are not perceived as user friendly or helpful. This highlights the importance of residence training for these newly developed products.

I found the storm trends displayed in Google earth very helpful in diagnosing the state of a given storm; however, the comment arose several times that these trends seemed to originate from a “black box”. I suggest that the forecasters be introduced to the storm clustering techniques and/or that the clusters themselves are visually depicted alongside the trends during future experiments.

The CASA and PAR arrays had the advantage of extremely fine temporal resolution. The rapid updates increased the confidence of our warnings by allowing a more complete understanding of storm morphology. Although the ~ 1-min resolution was helpful, it also introduced a problem. Specifically, it was difficult to fully exploit the rapid updates when multiple storms were likely to require warnings. This is alleviated somewhat with two forecasters, but it raises the question of the frequency at which radar updates become less advantageous.

The only total lightning product that we evaluated during week 2 was a column density of LMA sources (i.e., vertically integrated LMA). The main question that I heard was how this product differed from composite reflectivity. My knowledge of total lightning and its relation to storm severity allowed me to make some use of this product, but the forecasters did not seem to find it very helpful. I suggest that additional products be created that allow forecasters to evaluate total lightning trends in both space and time. In addition to the trends that were displayed in Google earth (i.e., during the weeks with real-time cases in the LMA domains), this also could be achieved by including spatial plots displaying VILMA changes in time (i.e., 5 or 10 min differences/trends).

This opportunity was invaluable to my current and future research. I cannot say that I fully grasp the difficulty in “Crossing the Valley of Death”, but I now have a much clearer understanding of the difficulty involved in the transfer of academic research to operational applications. I appreciated the opportunity greatly and will do my best to incorporate all that I learned into my ongoing research. Please feel free to contact me directly (srudlosky@fsu.edu) if you have any questions in regards to my HWT-EWP experience or my current research.

Scott Rudlosky (Florida State University – 2009 Week 2 Evaluator)