Comparing GREMLIN and LightningCast to actual Reflectivity and ENTLN Lightning Plots

Radar is an essential tool used across all CWA’s daily. What would you do if your CWA had the potential for severe weather but you did not have radar or MRMS? Well that is something I was able to experience today across KOUN’s CWA. Satellite convective products such as GREMLIN and LightningCast were crucial in being able to determine storm location and intensity. GREMLIN was helpful in being able to get an idea of the location of storms along with their intensity even though the range of reflectivity with GREMLIN is limited. The general idea was to see if there were any areas with high end reflectivity near 50 dbz as that usually indicated an area of stronger storms. If there were any areas with lesser values this may mean developing storms that could be checked with LightningCast data to see if it believes storm development is likely to occur there. Speaking of LightningCast it was very useful in determining locations of possible future storm development. Using the >1 strikes within the next 60 mins really helps highlight areas of potential storm development and motion. When comparing these products to actual reflectivity there are a few things that stand out. The first being a good ability to get a general idea of potential strong storms and future storm development. Both products highlighted about the same area where the actual reflectivity was located and where lightning clusters developed.

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These products were then able to do a good job in picking up the intensifying storms and their likely future location. This was shown from data taken at around 23Z.

Overall, both of these products were extremely useful and successful when it came to forecasting severe thunderstorms in a scenario where radar was not available. I can most definitely see these products being applied to everyday convective ops at CWA’s across the CONUS. The last two images show the 00Z comparison between GREMLIN and actual radar reflectivity.

– Sven The Puffin

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