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Our first live blog entry…
Our forecasters are currently getting familiar with the multi-radar/sensor products on an isolated supercell which is to the SW of the Cannon AFB radar site, east of Roswell.
Storm has developed a nice TBSS. MESH tracks also trending upwards again, above 1″. Sue and Steve are issuing our first experimental SVR warning.
Greg Stumpf (EWP Weekly Coordinator, 27 Apr – 1 May 2009)
Southwesterly flow aloft continues with the broad trough over the western U. S. Small impulses through the flow are likely for the next few days, with some timing to produce convection in the southern High Plains. On the surface, a strong upslope pattern is prevelent over eastern NM and SW TX, but as of 1pm, most of the area east of the mountains are socked in with low clouds, fog, and cool temperatures. There is evidence of the erosion of the low clouds on the west edge, and this trend is expected to continue into the evening.
The SPC DY1 outlook is seen here:
So, we are expecting an IOP for the multi-radar/sensor algorithms for SW TX and SE NM starting around 5pm. Before that, we will have the forecasters run through several CASA archive cases.
Greg Stumpf (EWP Weekly Coordinator, 27 Apr – 1 May 2009)
Today we crammed! Got the general orientation, WDSSII GUI, PAR, and CASA training in as quickly as possible in order to work an early IOP on the storms in Central OK. Unfortunately, as soon as we were ready, the storms decided to fizzle out. Therefore, we conducted a very short real-time IOP on the remaining convection using the PAR data. There was one decent example of the descending reflectivity core that was highly resolved by the PAR data, but for the most part, there was little to be observed.
The rest of the evening was spent having the visiting forecasters go through a PAR archive case (T.S. Erin Aug 2007) to gather feedback. We then completed the training sessions for the multi-radar/sensor applications and the LMA project during the final hour of the shift.
DY2 appears to be a West Texas event, and most likely our IOP will focus on the multi-radar/sensor applications.
Greg Stumpf (EWP Weekly Coordinator, 27 April – 1 May 2009)
Déjà vu! As like last year, the first day of the first week of the experiment finds us with a developing severe weather event right at the start of the shift. With little time to get ready, we are having a compressed orientation schedule today so that we can begin our first Intensive Operations Period (IOP) as soon as possible.
A cold front is slowly moving through central Oklahoma, and storms are already firing, and severe, on a SW-NE line to the northwest of Norman. Storms are presently impacting the PAR, CASA, and LMA domains.
These are on the edge (actually outside) the SPC DY1 SLGT RISK area, and a severe thiunderstorm watch as just been issued to encopass the convection (although some of it is outside the box too!).
The plan is to train our two visiting forecasters (Steve Cobb, LUB – Lubbock, TX; Suzanne Fortin, EAX – Pleasant Hill, MO) on the WDSSII display and the PAR project, then train on CASA. After that, we will evaluate the situation, and if needed, will commence IOP immediately, splitting up the two forecasters on PAR and CASA, possibly to rotate between the two experiments half-way through. If the storms are already out of the CSAA domain by the start of the IOP, then we will do an LMA experiment, although we prefer to have the LMA data available at convective initiation, which is already passed.
Greg Stumpf (EWP Weekly Coordinator, 27 April – 1 May 2009)
We’re only a few hours away from the shakedown week for the 2009 EWP spring experiment. Are we ready? Hmmmmmm….. Yes, we have made considerable progress, but we’ve got a few more loose ends to tie up before we can say we are 100% prepared. This is the week where we will go through the motions of a regular operational week, but without visiting forecasters. Instead, we’ll have some of the local NWC participants play the role of forecaster/evaluators as we test out the systems, technologies, and our operational concepts. Since we are still a few steps behind our comfort level, our shakedown “week” is now scheduled to begin with our 1pm coordination briefing on Tuesday 21 April (instead of Monday). Hopefully this extra day (or two?) will give us the extra time to finish putting up all the electronic drywall, paint, and landscaping.
Greg Stumpf (EWP Operations Coordinator)
Yesterday was the first day of spring. It seems appropriate to kick off spring with our first EWP Blog post of 2009.
We are in the process of planning for the 2009 EWP Spring Experiment a the Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) in Norman, OK. Once again, I will be the Operations Coordinator for the experiment, and Kevin Manross will be the IT Coordinator. We have a bit of work to do before our first shakedown week, which is less than a month away. Part of the work will include an update to the content on the EWP Web Page, so stay tuned for that in the coming weeks.
This is the third year for activities in the testbed at the National Weather Center. There will be four primary projects geared toward WFO applications, 1) an evaluation of experimental multiple-radar/sensor gridded severe weather algorithm products using the NSSL Warning Decision Support System II (WDSSII), 2) an evaluation of the 3D Lightning Mapping Arrays (LMA) in Central Oklahoma, Northern Alabama, the DC Metro Area, and possibly East-Central Florida, 3) an evaluation of networked 3-cm radars (CASA) in Central Oklahoma, and 4) an evaluation the phased array radar (PAR) in Norman. We expect the participants to be active in the LMA, CASA, and PAR experiments when severe weather is affecting those domains. The WDSSII multi-radar/sensor algorithm experiment is less dependent on local weather since we can access the needed radar and other data sets remotely for nearly anywhere in the U. S.
As like last year, operational activities will take place during the week Monday through Thursday (1-9 pm), and an end-of-week operations debriefing will be given on Friday (10am-1pm). We will be posting blog udpates at the beginning of each day to provide a summary of the severe weather forecast and our operations plans that day. We will also post end-of-day summaries and an end-of-week summary. Finally, as like last year, we hope to be blogging live during our Intensive Operations Periods (IOP).
Some may notice that our Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) experiment is on hold this spring. We received a lot of useful feedback last spring, and with that, we are planning to re-tool the experiment for 2010. The new experiment will take advantage of improved technology (AWIPS2 maturation, better ways to input the information, better ways to derive the grids), improved science (first steps at automated probabilistic guidance and warn-on-forecast), upscale activities (blending WFO short-fused warning information with longer term SPC watch and outlook information), and a social science component (a spectrum of users consuming the information in a variety of ways).
Stay tuned for more updates.
Greg Stumpf (EWP Operations Coordinator)
Just want to make an entry advertising the upcoming Advanced Weather And Society – Integrated Studies (WAS*IS) workshop “Beyond Storm-Based Warnings”. This workshop focuses on integrating interdisciplinary reaserch with our gridded Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) concept (what we used to call in this blog the “Prob Warn” experiment). Here’s a link to the workshop page. Note that this workshop is by invite only (because space is limited), but we will share results at some point in the future (e.g., AMS Annual Meeting).
http://ewp.nssl.noaa.gov/wasis2008/
Greg Stumpf
After we wrapped up daily operations in the HWT on 6 June 2008, I took a 2 week holiday to chase storms and then entertain visiting family members. I’ve spent the last few days back in the office catching up on 9+ weeks of accumulated emails and other assorted and sundry items that have piled up.
I’ve been meaning to make a post expressing my gratitude to the many participants of the Experimental Warning Program’s 2008 spring experiment. This year’s experiment was an order of magnitude larger in terms of effort by these folks than last year’s experiment, and they all deserve many kudos.
The biggest expression of thanks goes to our IT Coordinator, Kevin Manross, who put in more hours than anyone else to pull off the experiment.
Next, I’d like to thank our Weekly Coordinators for keeping operations on track each week: Jim LaDue, Kevin Manross (again!), Travis Smith, Patrick Burke, and Liz Quoetone. There were a few times when we relied on our backup coordinators to fill in when needed: Kevin Scharfenberg and Kiel Ortega.
The cognizant scientists brought their expertise to the experiment to help guide live operations and playback of archive cases for each of the three experiments.
For the Gridded Warning Experiment, they included Kiel Ortega (his software!), Kristin Kuhlman (she shed that rookie hat quickly!), Mike Magsig (lots of these ideas were his), Travis Smith (SWAT’s fearless leader), Angelyn Kolodziej (up and coming star), Les Lemon (the veteran), Kevin Scharfenberg (the “bureaucrat”), and Kevin Manross (once again!).
For the Phased Array Radar (PAR) experiment, Dr. Pamela Heinselman captained the ship, along with Ric Adams, Dr. Rodger Brown, Les Lemon, Kristin Kuhlman, Arthur Witt, Dave Preignitz, Rick Hlucan, and that seemingly available Kevin Manross.
For the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) experiment, the leadership of Brenda Phillips and Jerry Brotzge got us through the storm, or lack there of! Maybe next time we’ll get decent storms in the CASA network during the forecaster shifts, and not the last hour of the last day of the experiment! In addition, we had help from Ellen Bass, Don Rude, David Pepyne, Kurt Hondl, and Patrick Marsh.
We had IT help from Charles Kerr, Vicki Farmer, Karen Cooper, Paul Griffin, Brad Sagowitz, Brian Schmidt, Doug Kennedy, Joe Young, and Darrel Kingfield.
There were a number of guest evaluators from the NWC that provided expertise: Brad Grant, Cynthia Whittier, Paul Schlatter, John Ferree, Patrick Marsh, and Jami Boettcher.
Undergraduate students who supported our SHAVE efforts were: Steve Irwin (coordinator), Jennifer Bowen, Jessica Erlingis, Margaret Frey, Tiffany Meyer, and Kelsey Mulder.
I can’t forget our extra special guest star from the Weather And Society Integrated Studies (WAS*IS) program, Dr. Eve Gruntfest, who spent an exciting week with us in mid-May.
The EWP leadership team of Travis Smith and David Andra, along with the other HWT management committee members (Steve Weiss, Jack Kain, Mike Foster, Joe Schaefer, and Jeff Kimpel), and my MDL boss Dr. Stephan Smith, were instrumental in providing the necessary resources to make the EWP (and EFP) spring experiment happen.
Finally, I express a multitude of thanks to our National Weather Service and international operational meteorologists who traveled to Norman to participate as evaluators in this experiment (and I also thank their local and regional management for providing the personnel). They are:
David Blanchard (WFO Flagstaff, AZ)
Mike Cammarata (WFO Columbia, SC)
Ken Cook (WFO Wichita, KS)
Andy Edman (NWS Western Region HQ)
Bill Rasch (WFO Billings, MT)
Craig Shoemaker (WFO Tucson, AZ)
Bryan Tugwood (Environment Canada, Toronto, ON)
David Schmidt (Environment Canada, Edmonton, AB)
Ria Alsen (Environment Canada, Toronto, ON)
Dave Hotz (WFO Morristown, TN)
Daniel Porter (WFO Albuquerque, NM)
Ron Przybylinski (WFO St. Louis, MO)
Dan Miller (WFO Duluth, MN)
Jonathon Howell (WFO Memphis, TN)
Steve Rogowski (WFO Sterling, VA)
Steve Hodanish (WFO Pueblo, CO)
Ryan Knutsvig (WFO Elko, NV)
Dave Patrick (Environment Canada, Winnipeg, MB)
Eric Stevens (WFO Fairbanks, AK)
Kevin Brown (WFO Norman, OK)
Mark Melsness (Environment Canada, Winnipeg, MB)
Brad Colman (WFO Seattle, WA)
Jon Hitchcock (WFO Buffalo, NY)
George Phillips (WFO Topeka, KS)
Chris Sohl (WFO Norman, OK)
Milovan Radmanovac (Hydrometeorological Service of Serbia)
Many thanks to everyone, including those I may have inadvertently left off this list. Please let me know if I missed anyone. I can certainly edit this post and include their names later.
Greg Stumpf (EWP Operations Coordinator)
I just spent most of the day cleaning up all the entries on the EWP Blog. This included fixing “ownership” of posts and post categories, standardizing the post titles, and re-ordering posts in their correct chronological order. It should make the blog entries easier to read now.
Greg Stumpf (EWP Operations Coordinator)
I am beginning to post feedback from some of our visiting forecaster/evaluator participants. I have pre-dated these posts to match up with the end of the week that each forecaster participate. A quick link to these posts is on the side of this blog, “Forecaster Thoughts”, or you can just click here.
The 2008 EWP scientists will be meeting soon to have a post-mortem “retreat” of sorts to start planning for 2009. Some information may be posted here in the coming days. Also, as we begin to analyze the data, you may see more posts in the future.
Greg Stumpf (2008 EWP Operations Coordinator)
