AzShear Case Assessment

First time looking at these products (Single Radar AzShear, Merged AzShear 0-2km, and Merged AzShear 3-6km) and I’m already liking how quick it is to pull my eyes to areas I should be paying close attention to. The most obvious feature is the circulation well to the SW of the radar site (close to 115km out), but what I find to be even more useful is watching mid-level rotation tighten into a low-level circulation closer to the radar site (around 51km away). In the first screen capture below, the Single Radar AzShear product highlighted the RFD bulging out, which is very useful in being able to fully diagnose the developing case. In an operational setting, having the full suite of AzShear products available to supplement traditional radar products could raise confidence when making a warning decision. Both of the merged products increase my confidence in the vertical depth of the circulation, but is also useful when diagnosing shallow circulations, at least in this one case I’ve been looking at. I’ll be interested to see how these products perform in other cases, particularly ones that involve the more shallow QLCS TOR-scenario.

All that said, I will say that there are enough false positives appearing in the AzShear product suite, particularly the Single Radar one, that caution should be taken if using solo, without reference to the traditional radar products. In an even more active scenario, I could potentially see false positives taking the warning forecaster’s attention away from features that need closer attention.

~Gritty