Understanding Violent Weather

Fundamentals of Forecasting
Lynn P. Maximuk
Meteorologist In Charge
WFO Pleasant Hill, MO
October 24, 2005

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 IT Has Changed The Weather
Forecast World
• The NWS primary product is information –
not text messages
• Partners and customers demand more of
the most current information possible,
available when they want it
• High resolution graphical and tabular data
for improved service
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 Digital Forecast Goals
• Leverage national and local expertise to:
• Provide high resolution forecast information
• Ensure meteorological consistency
• Focus on high impact events
• Provide Information in multiple formats

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 National Digital Forecast Database
(NDFD)
• Multiple input sources – Time and Space
• WFOs
• National Centers
HPC/SPC/CPC/AWC/NHC/TPC etc.
• NWS product – not local office product
• Offices produce a piece of the product
• Meteorological consistency a must
• One stop shopping
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 Digital Data
• Will continue to evolve
• Add a vertical dimension
• Watch and warning information
• Observational information
• Climatological information
• Tap into GIS capabilities
• Readily useable formats

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 Modern Technology
• New ways to prepare forecasts by
depicting the underlying forecast
information
• Flexibility extracting information to meet
partner and customer needs – formats
without bounds
• Ability for rapid updates

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 Service and Information Flow
• Frequent updates in short term – hourly
• High spatial resolution – 5km nationally
and 2.5km locally
• More detailed forecast information for
weather parameters important to partners
and customers to feed their formatters and
decision software

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 How to Obtain NDFD Data
• Data, decoders and detailed information
available at the following web sites:
• Weather.gov/ndfd
• Weather.gov/ndfd/technical.htm
• Database contents, format, etc.
• Available in GRIB2, NetCDF and XML

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Data Extraction Ideas

The Sky is the Limit!

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Traditional Forecast Format

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Detailed Forecast Information

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Decision Aid

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 Polygon Warning Experiment
• Warnings were issued for the ‘threat area’
of a storm, counties fell out as needed
from this threat area.
• Extensive outreach on key issues
conducted spring 2005.
• Multiple warnings in effect for a county.
• Impact on EAS
• How to ‘visualize’ the polygons?

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 Polygon Warning Experiment
• Customer feedback:
• Many emergency managers expressed that
one of the reasons they rated services
improved this year was because of the refined
‘box’ used in warnings.
• Some radio stations lukewarm (especially with
regard to tornado warnings and EAS), as they
get more warnings for the same ‘county’.

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Media perspective on polygons
• Cones Of “StormTracks” are already
familiar with viewers
• Text Crawls already cut whole county
warnings
• Challenge is to marry audio message with
new video display
• Learning curve with Media and NWS

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Polygons in action

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