For Day 2, we were the Wichita Office. Our IDSS event had a high probability of lightning. Our group had a discussion about the idea of “lighting ending”, as that is a common question from outdoor events. In this case, ProbLighting did a great job of forecasting the ending time of lightning by using the time of arrival tool on the back gradient of the convection. Of course this would not work for back building storms or new development, but it performed well in this case. We incorporated that time info into our messaging.

The image above shows the ProbLighting (V2, left, V1 right) with ENL pulses on the left. This time of arrival tracker is shown in white on the left. Unfortunately AWIPS locked up toward the end, but this time of arrival gave a fairly accurate forecast that was used in the graphic.

The image above shows the graphic that we created at 346pm that showed the storms ending at 6pm using the time of arrival tracker on the back side of the Prob Lightning gradient. This turned out to be fairly accurate. In a real scenario, we could have probably briefed this information out to the decision maker.

– Updraft