OCTANE Direction

OCTANE Speed

One thing I noticed when flipping back and forth between the OCTANE speed and direction products is that there were areas where the Direction dropped out completely while Speed remained fully intact.

Top left: OCTANE Speed, top right: OCTANE Divergence (no smooth) & Cloud Top Cooling, Bottom left: OCTANE Divergence (med smooth) & Cloud Top Cooling, Bottom right: OCTANE Divergence (high smooth) & Cloud Top Cooling

Top left: OCTANE Speed

top right: OCTANE Divergence (no smooth)

bottom left: OCTANE Divergence (med smooth)

Bottom right: OCTANE Divergence (high smooth)

An additional observation and preference I had was that having the cloud top cooling and divergence overlaid could be helpful in some situations (initiation), but when monitoring for divergence signals, there were several occasions where the strongest divergence signals were far harder to spot or completely covered up by a cooling signal that wasn’t even that strong. This was especially true for when convection was ongoing/mature, when the cooling signals weren’t particularly strong because the tops couldn’t cool much more than they were. My personal preference would be to have separate procedures for convective initiation and mature/ongoing convection to have a more clear visualization of relevant features/products in the procedure when there are several areas to monitor for convective development. Perhaps this would be something I would remember to toggle on/off with time based on the situation, but wasn’t intuitive for learning how the products work and what scenarios each product could/should be used in.

-prob30