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Being this was my first time using the Dashboard, It took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at and which was V1 vs V2. But I believe the green line was V2, and it performed comparatively to yesterday in that it was quicker to react to the threat.
– Lightning McQueen
My office’s internet went down hard for the entire day, so I had to utilize a mobile hot spot. AWIPS in the cloud was very sluggish and unusable on the mobile hotspot so I opted to only utilize the web based tools for today.
With a focus on the Brisket Appreciation Society Annual Bash in Beaumont, TX, storms started to emerge to the west and southwest of the event around 2 PM. I found the DSS dashboard useful when monitoring the specific location, but I wanted to use the LightningCast map as well for overall situational awareness. It was a little difficult for me to find exactly where the location was, so it would be useful for the map to have a dynamic layer for the DSS events.
I created a public graphic around the time lightning started near the to move closer to the DSS event. I generally utilized radar and LightningCast dashboard for the DSS event for the messaging. I did not include an image of the LightningCast for the graphic because it was already above 80% when I created the image. Because of this, there was very high confidence that lightning would occur, with the goal of the graphic to inform people of the approaching storms and the associated hazards.
LightningCast (both v1 and v2) stayed very high during the entirety of the event. When looking at the DSS dashboard, the probabilities within for the event increased to >80% 30 minutes before lightning was within a 10 mile radius of the event. There was an issue with the 1 minute data that caused that dip to 0. However, the 1 minute data is very noisy, and in this case, is not an improvement when compared to the 5 minute data.
– Golden Retriever Lover
LC V2 did better with lightning cessation showing lightning probabilities dropping quicker as convection moved east of the DSS event which it title “HOME”. This allowed for more timely DSS updates to partners mentioning the lightning threat was diminishing, at least over the next hour or so. LC V2 also did better with storms to the south which we will talk about more below.
LC V2 showed higher probabilities for lightning quicker for developing storms near southern portions of the county warning area. V2 also lowered probabilities quicker once the storms temporarily pulsed down. I do believe one or both of these storms eventually pulsed up again after this though so it is possible V1 performed slightly better in this scenario by keeping slightly higher lightning probabilities.
LC V2 had tighter areal extent of lightning probabilities overall which was more helpful and accurate. May just need to be a little more weary of sensitivity to decreasing lightning probs too quickly for pulse thunderstorms in the summer.
– Ricky Bobby
We were operating as NWS JAX on 5/7/25. There was not a huge severe threat, but there were cells that produced a lot of lightning. Our DSS event was the Cabbage, Potato, and Bacon Festival in Hastings, FL (labeled as “home” in AWIPS). As soon as the day started, there were cells within the range of the festival, with our primary focus on lightning cessation. One of the first things I noticed was that for the cells to the north of the cells, LightningCast v1 had a wider spatial extent of the probabilities than v2 for areas of decaying convection. I assumed this was because of the MRMS data as there were lower MRMS -10C reflectivities in the northern edges of the convection where the lower v2 probabilities were. I was curious how that would impact the probabilities for the event as the convection began to decay there and how it related to notifying the event of an “all clear”.
Image 1: LightningCast data v1 vs v2 from 19:50Z to 20:11Z.
With respect to the event itself, using the lightning dashboard (image 2) was helpful. Probabilities both in v1 and v2 were high for the beginning of the day in the middle of all the convection. Probabilities started to decline around 20:15Z. Initially, v1 was declining faster, but by 20:30Z, v2 was declining at a faster rate than v1. There was still lightning within the 10 mile radius during these declines, but v2 it seems that v2 caught on to the decay a bit faster. This is also shown in the LightningCast loop from AWIPS (image 3) where v1 had a larger spatial extent to the higher probabilities for longer. I used LightningCast probabilities in my DSS messaging. When the probabilities were going down, I used a number in between each version for the probability I used in the message. I also utilized MesoAnywhere 1 minute Channel 13 data once it became available for us to monitor the potential for new convection behind the main cluster of cells. There was not much being shown, which made me more comfortable noting the event of an all clear. Probabilities eventually did start to go back up after 21:15Z because there was a lot of convection to the north and south of the event.
Image 2: LightningCast Dashboard for the Cabbage, Potato, and Bacon Festival in Hastings, FL.
Image 3: Lightning Cast comparison loop from 20:43Z to 21:32Z.
Without the use of radar out of Duluth more reliance was given to Satellite derived observations and satellite derived output.
Below is the OCTANE cloud top cooling and cloud top divergence product. You may notice in an area of moderate but increasing instability there is convective initiation ahead of the main line of convection. However, you can notice early in the loop that there is convective cooling indicated in the south-central portion of the CWA and the far SE portion of the CWA. Notice how in the far SE portion of the CWA there is the purple shading indicating cloud top divergence. And in south central portions there are “hotter” yellow and tiny red(s) (may be hard to notice due to scale) pixels indicating cooling cloud tops, but with no purple shading and thus no meaningful divergence at the cloud top. This is indicative of orphan anvils. The moral of the story here is that without radar the OCTANE product heightens your attention to the cells in the far SE portion of the CWA, and this would be where to consider SVR or SPS product release, with the activity across South Central portions of the CWA failing to produce significant convection at this point in time despite moderate to strong instability.
Further southeast however notice that there is stronger instability over SE portions of the CWA, thus the OCTANE product is giving you a result which coincides with where there is higher instability (higher MLCAPE – see SPC mesoanalysis).
Lightning Cast continued to show high confidence of lightning over the next 60 min with the linear MCS moving into western portions of the CWA. This lead to high confidence in forecasting lightning for a DSS location (Solana State Forest) during this event.
Steady behavior with the greater than or equal to 10 flashes in the next hour.
High probability of 1 flash of lightning in the next hour, increasing then holding steady
Here (below) is the Lightning Cast and GLM dashboard output comparing the forecast to the GLM flash count. Note: the dashboard was down initially but came back online
Thus we were able to give a high confidence lightning forecast for DSS.
Here is the GLM Flash Extent Density at the time of the Lightning Cast 1 hour forecast.
– 5454wx
We have a Fishing Derby ongoing near Pierre, South Dakota. We observed some differences in the LightningCast probabilities within a 10 mile radius between the AWIPS contour plot and the dashboard.
Here’s an image from AWIPS at 2004Z (1504 local time), with the DSS point marked by a 10-mile radius near Pierre SD (white circle), and the LightningCast probabilities (60-min for 1 flash) contoured in blue and green.
Next, here is a look at the dashboard for the same DSS event. Of interest is the pink line, which shows the maximum probability for a flash within 10 miles of the DSS point within the last 5 minutes.
At the 1506 (local time) time slot on the dashboard, it shows the maximum probability of 47 percent. However, the AWIPS image above shows the greatest contour values within the DSS point radius for that same time minute span (at 1504 local time) and the value only barely exceeds 30 percent. It appears that the value on the dashboard is reading about 15% higher than the value that would be implied by the contour display in AWIPS.
Functionally, as long as the trends are consistent, this may not make much of an impact on messaging or forecasting for this DSS point. However, having the values more closely matching between the two sources is something that would likely increase forecaster confidence.
–Insolation
Monitoring convective development over the southwestern portion of the ABR CWA, where we are providing DSS support to a Fishing Derby (yellow range ring – 10 miles). From this data, I would be able to let an EM know that we’re noticing an uptick in lightning probabilities due to storm cells developing to the south/southeast of the Derby and moving northeast. These are not severe at this time and no lightning has been observed as of yet. However, currently, probabilities of lightning within 10 miles are between 40-50%. If I were to use LC while at an on-site deployment, I would have both the map view (first image/loop below) and the graph (second image below) up to show what I am looking at, but especially the map view to give context to the graph.
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| LightningCast in “map view” showing probabilities of one or more flashes (as an image, not contoured) |
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| LightningCast Dashboard showing lightning probabilities at DSS point (Fishing Derby, Aberdeen, DS) |
UPDATE # 1 – Lightning has been observed! From when the 10% contour (10% chance of 10 or more flashes) first popped up (red contour north of Lyman) at 2010Z, it was 10 minutes until GLM and the ground networks observed flashes. It was 5 minutes later when ground networks observed CGs.
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| LightningCast – time of first 10% contour (red) 2010Z |
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| LightningCast – GLM and ground networks observe flashes 2020Z |
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| LightningCast – Ground networks observe CGs 2025Z |
In terms of lead time, I crafted a DSS message between 310-315pm (seen in the first paragraph above this update) and the first flashes were observed at 320p and CGs at 325p. Therefore, this gave a 10-15 minute lead time.
Working on the DSS for the PGA tournament, one of the more frustrating features was how thunderstorms well outside the range of the event produced lightning. About the time one DSS image was sent, there was a lightning flash that occurred well north of the primary cluster and near a very weak area of reflectivity.
Trying to find the reason why, the most likely situation is that the forecaster may have mistyped, either mixing up decimal points in the lat/lon, or swapping two digits around. It may be helpful to be able to go back and edit the entry if that occurs or be able to view the lat/lon point to be certain whether a typo occurred putting in the entry.
Kadic
LightningCast has been running high near the PGA Tournament today near Fort Worth as a result of several thunderstorms around the region, but not over the region. As a result, decided to swap over towards trying to use GREMLIN to find the time of arrival of the boundary noted earlier.
So an attempt was made to highlight this in the DSS image to provide an estimate of when these hazards would arrive. Perhaps another proofread would’ve caught the initial typo from copying it over. However, a value of about 40 percent was noted. Partners still had information that storms would become increasingly likely over a narrower time frame in addition to the probabilistic information from LightningCast.
Kadic
