I share some of Steve Keighton’s comments on structure/logistics of the EWP. Here are a few more general comments: I think collaboration with the EFP could be very useful, I just did not find it to be the one day that I was not on the full-blown warning shift. I also would find it useful to either a) Not be completely focused on the timeliness of warnings, and more on the analysis of the products, (b) Possibly having certain forecasters focus on certain products at various times in the warning process. That said, it is good to see what products came to the forefront and which ones maybe were not (and maybe should have!), and to truly mimic a warning environment,. Having grown accustomed to 3 D2D screens in a warning environment, I did not use quite as many products as I would have in a typical environment, and was also creating procedures on the fly, which I would not normally do in a warning situation. I would be really interested to see the effects of Dual Polarization has on screen real estate, and if it would affect the experimental products chosen for use in the warming decision/awareness process. I think we all tried to strike a balance between attempting to simulate and get warnings out in “real” time vs. giving each new tool more attention.

Below are a few key points about specific products from my experience. These comments have been shared with the staff at WFO Portland, and will be shared with all Western Region SOOs.

* The OUN WRF was a “hot model”, in that it also appeared to break the cap too quickly. That said, it did clue us in to potential scenarios, and seemed to have a decent grasp on convective mode expected, given convective initiation. It would be nice to have this run in an ensemble mode as well, as it basically served as another tool to compare to EMC WRF, NSSL WRF, and the RUC HRRR models.

* The 3DVAR Multi-Radar Real Time Data Assimilation Products, while fairly new, hold alot of promise. The products that I found useful included the Updraft (instantaneous and track) and the Rotation products. The Updraft product, while sometimes misplaced, was still very valuable. The downdraft products were a bit noisy, not only in multicell situations, but even in supercell cases. These products aided in assessing whether updrafts were strengthening or weakening, and the rotation track also aided in more accurately following storm motion. While I did not rely on these products, and did always confirm what I was seeing with my traditional radar analysis, it did provide a clearer situational awareness picture, and it was fairly easy to create procedures to integrate into the warning decision process.

* Convective Initiation tools, while useful, are still contaminated by cirrus. They did provide some lead time before seeing significant radar echoes, though lead time in rapidly developing cases was not much more. I did find, once radar operations got more intense, that I did ignore these products a bit more than I wanted to, but it was more a workload issue. Also, on the days where convective initiation did not occur, these tools provided a correct NULL result. I did like the CIMSS product a bit better, as it provided CI likely, CI occurring, CI possible vs. a YES/NO from UAH. The UAH algorithm was too sensitive, and the CIMSS product seemed not sensitive enough. This is intended as the CIMSS product is going for a low False Alarm Rate, and UAH is going for high Probability of Detection.

* We got to look at multi-cellular and more borderline cases as well, which was very useful instead of focusing on “supercell” cases. The products didn’t do too bad, though seemed to perform best in more traditional supercellular cases.

* The pseudo-GLM was very useful in that it focused attention on storm intensification, and was able to pick up on flash rates much earlier than the CG network. Though I did not see this for many borderline cases, this would be useful when the forecaster is not sure whether particular areas are electrified or not, particularly when not seeing any CG strikes.

* I relied heavily on the Multi-radar, multi-sensor products when in a warning environment. I wouldn’t say they made the warning decision for me, but they served as a great situational awareness tool as to where to focus my attention. Of particular use were the -10C and -20 C Reflectivity products, but my favorites were the 50 dbz height above/below a user specified level (such as the -20 C level), MESH (Multi-radar estimated hail size, both instantaneous and track). These products were great for estimating hail size when combined with radar tools. These products are available (they are adding the Western domain soon, if not already) on wdssii.nssl.noaa.gov as KML files, or on a neat google map in
development wdssii.nssl.noaa.gov/maps.

Thank you again for allowing me to participate in the EWP this year. This was my first experience in an experimental warning program, and I hope to leverage this experience to spread the word on the promise on new warning decision tools, and to hopefully participate in another Experimental Warning Program in the future.

Kevin Donofrio (General Forecaster, NWS Portland OR – EWP2011 Week 2 Participant)