General – Page 101

Update: 2011-06-09 2340 UTC

Posted in General on June 9, 2011 by Greg Stumpf.

Our early shift participants (Chris #1 and Chris #2) have broken off warnings to fill out their surveys, and Bill and Justin have taken over the NYC WFO (OKX) as the squall line moves over Long Island Sound. It will soon be offshore, and at 6pm, we are planning to take a dinner break and move our domain to Oklahoma to watch the high-based storms and monitor OUN WRF, PGLM, and 3DVAR products.

The 3DVAR products, particularly the updraft products, seemed to underperform today. Not worthy of an image on the blog.

Greg Stumpf, EWP2011 Week 4 Coordinator

Update: 2011-06-09 2100 UTC

Posted in General on June 9, 2011 by Greg Stumpf.

In other news…the SPC just issued a blue box for western Oklahoma. Since this is in our LMA domain, and OUN WRF, we may consider moving our operations to there. More later….

Greg Stumpf, EWP2011 Week 4 Coordinator

Update: 2011-06-09 2150 UTC

Posted in General on June 9, 2011 by Greg Stumpf.

Tech woes are slowly resolving. The 3DVAR issues are fixed for now, although our domain is a bit too small to capture the breadth of the severe weather event. AWIPS issues on higgins are causing problems with warning issuance. We discovered that the Boston warning headers are ‘BOX’ and need to be manually changed to ‘BOS’. In addition, the warning VTEC counters are not incrementing with each new warning, so we’ll need to edit these manually.

So, what is going on weatherwise? We have a line of severe storms moving through southern New England and southeast New York, with a few stray severe cells out ahead of the line. And we just got a report of 1.75″ hail from Wappingers Falls, NY, my home town! The event looks like this right now (Reflectivity at -20C):

Greg Stumpf, EWP2011 Week 4 Cooridinator

Morning Area Forecast Discussion 6/7/2011

Posted in Area Forecast Discussion (AFD), General on June 7, 2011 by Liz Quoetone.

Satellite imagery reveals upper level energy…centered over southern Montana…with associated vort lobe extending through to northeast Colorado. Upper air analysis also indicates jet max from central Rockies region…then curves northward to the western Dakotas. Subjective surface analysis indicates a warm frontal boundary…from southeast North Dakota to northern Wisconsin.

Surface based instability…south of the warm front…has already 2000 + j/kg….immediately south of warm front. Short term model output suggests that instability will reach extreme levels across much of Minnesota and Wisconsin…and the extreme eastern Dakotas…as the warm front lifts slowly northward this afternoon. Forecast soundings indicate deep layer shear will continue to be strong…as jet energy remains near the area. Forecast low level shear fields appear to be strongest…>200 m2/s2 …from long Canadian border from eastern North Dakota…northern Minnesota…to Lake Superior.

Forecast convective initiation will be affected by a considerable low-mid level cap…per 12z regional soundings.

However…this convective inhibition is expected to weaken…as upper wave rotates through the northern plains this afternoon and evening.

At this time…expect greatest potential for severe convection will be across these areas (in order of greatest potential) :

DLH
GRB/MQT
FGF
northern areas of MPX/ARX

At this time…supercells appeared to be preferred between 21z-03z..across areas 1 and 2…across areas of best distribution of surface based instability and deep layer shear.

DC LMA —

Limited possibility exists for thunderstorms in the D.C. LMA… as an ongoing mcs complex over eastern Ohio and northern West Virginia may continue to track southeast towards the DC LMA target area and/or provide a low level focus for new development. Models indicate better instabilities will be located over the western part of the LMA. Marginal deep level shear will limit the likelihood for supercell development.

sohl/buonanno

EWP2011 Week #4 Begins

Posted in General on June 6, 2011 by Greg Stumpf.

Monday 6 June begins the fourth and final week of our four-week spring experiment of the 2011 NSSL-NWS Experimental Warning Program (EWP2011) in the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed at the National Weather Center in Norman, OK. Our distinguished NWS guests will be Bill Bunting (WFO Fort Worth, TX), Chris Buonanno (WFO Little Rock, AR), Justin Lane (WFO Greenville, SC), Chris Sohl (WFO Norman, OK), and Dan Miller (WFO Duluth, MN).

Photo 1: From the foreground…Chris Buonanno, Chris Sohl, and Pieter Groenemeijer.

Photo 2: From the foreground…Bill Bunting and Justin Lane.

Other visiting participants this week will include Ralph Petersen (UW-CIMSS), Bob Aune (UW-CIMSS), Jordan Gerth (UW-CIMSS), Lori Schultz (UAH), Jim Gurka (NESDIS), and Pieter Groenemeijer (European Severe Storms Laboratory, Munich, Germany).

Today, Monday, is the time we spend training our visitors and getting them acquainted to the experimental products which they will be evaluating during real-time operations on Tue-Wed-Thu. The first half of the day consisted of PowerPoint presentations from the various project PIs. The second half of the day, they are perusing the experimental data on a displaced real-time case from 19 May 2010 over Central Oklahoma (High Risk supercell and tornado day).

Greg Stumpf, EWP2011 Week #4 Coordinator