Storms moving 60-70mph thru outer edges of PAR network. Features getting interesting just beyond range (as seen on Vance 88D). CASA network remains untouched and it looks like things will really have to morph in order to make it in there by the end of this IOP.
Liz Quoetone (EWP Weekly Coordinator, 2-6 June)
Forecasters are using prob warn polygon tool to highlight areas of concern and denoting threat. This is to simulate warning decisions.
Liz Quoetone (EWP Weekly Coordinator, 2-6 June)
Storms have begun to fire over SW Oklahoma just inside the PAR network. Also have a fire going up in Gotebo which has resulted in the evauation of the entire town. We are currently running 2 PAR stations (Chris, Milovan and George, Jon). Will transistion one team to CASA later today if/when storms move into the CASA network. Right now we are estimating not before 5pm.
Liz Quoetone (EWP Weekly Coordinator, 2-6 June)
HWT Participants finishing up PW exercise and on the verge of going live with PAR. George and Jon in the background, with Milovan and Chris in the foreground.
Liz Quoetone (EWP Weekly Coordinator, 2-6 June)
Gridded Warning Archive case:
George reports that everything is under control. Apparently feels like he’s mastered the process enough to keep up. Jami Boettcher has thus chosen to sit with George and have him walk her thru the PW process.
Meanwhile back in the current time, new TOR covering western OK being considered by SPC.
Liz Quoetone (EWP Weekly Coordinator, 2-6 June)
Skipping the formalities today as all are expecting something this evening with Mdt risk and PDS watch out for the NW. Apparently we’ll have several NWC employees available to provide ground truth over parts of KS/OK. Current storms are not in testbed range. Forecasters will go through the Prob Warn “exercise” given to all testbed participants. This should conclude by 3-3:30pm. By then we hope to have something in PAR range and hopefully some time after that, storms in CASA range. This is the last day for the Spring EWP.
LizQ
The IOP today lasted from 5:15 pm to 7:30 pm, and we shut down early to save our energy for Thursday’s potentially significant event. For the first time, we concentrated on all 3 threats (severe hail, severe wind, and tornado) for multiple storms near the Northeast Colorado/Southwest Nebraska border region. We had two teams, Chris/Milovan and George/Jon. One team member monitored the near-storm environment and interrogated the base radar data using AWIPS, while the other team member created the probabilistic hazard forecast grids. The team members switched roles around 6:20 pm.
Chris reported it was hard to “ramp up” from a cold start. He added it would be hard to predict how the work load might be distributed around the WFO in a warning event if probabilistic grids were the primary product. George assumed the software would be easier to use and more stable in an operational environment, and he thought there would still be the same difficulties anticipating short-term changes in storm motion and intensity. In terms of workspace management (desktop real estate), Jon said it was a good idea to keep the product generation screen separate from the data interrogation screen. Everyone reported it was not easy to keep the creation polygons visually separate when working all 3 hazards at once on the same storm, and therefore hard to work with them.
Kevin Scharfenberg (EWP Backup Weekly Coordinator, 2-6 June)
New echoes developing in the Hayes/Frontier County area. One team has added some low hail probabilities downstream.
Kevin Scharfenberg (Gridded Warning Cognizant Scientist)
Both storms are producing occasional tornadoes, high winds, and hail, so they are pretty easy from a probabilistic standpoint. Forecasters report some discomfort using the GUI to keep track of lots of interlocked threat areas. New towering cumulus and early echoes going up south and east of the existing storms so we may still be able to do early initiation probabilities.
Kevin Scharfenberg (Gridded Warning Cognizant Scientist)
Working all threats on two cyclic supercells in far NE CO and far SW NE. Interesting for the forecasters dealing with velocity couplets moving in different directions as they occlude and “hand off” to the next mesocyclone.
Kevin Scharfenberg (Gridded Warning Cognizant Scientist)