NSSL/SPC Spring Forecasting Experiment Blog: 04/30/2017

Wednesday, May 03, 2017

Snow Forecasting Experiment??

Strange considerations can crop up in the SFE. In previous years we have forecasted in areas of low radar coverage such as the mountain west, determined which side of the U.S.-Mexico border a storm would form on, and dealt with the severity of convection coming onshore from the Gulf. However, remnants of last weekend's storm threw a highly unusual wrinkle in the forecast....

Sunday, April 30, 2017

CLUEing in on Spring Forecasting Experiment 2017

It's nearly the beginning of May (even if it doesn't feel like it in Norman, OK, with a current windchill of 38°F!) and that means that another Spring Forecasting Experiment is about to be underway. This year the Community Leveraged Unified Ensemble (CLUE) is an even more vast than last year, comprised of 81 members from organizations such as NSSL, CAPS, OU, NOAA's Earth Systems Research Laboratory/Global Systems Division (ESRL/GSD), NCAR, and GFDL. These members will provide forecasts of 36 h to 60 h in length, depending on the subsets of the ensemble being considered.

About the NSSL Spring Experiment

The NOAA HWT Spring Forecasting Experiment is a yearly experiment that investigates the use of convection-allowing model forecasts as guidance for the prediction of severe convective weather. A variety of model output is examined and evaluated daily during the experiment and experimental severe weather forecasts are created and verified. The variety of model output allows us to explore different types of guidance, including products derived from both ensembles and deterministic forecasts.

The 2018 Spring Forecasting Experiment will be held from April 30th through June 1st in the HWT facility at the National Weather Center in Norman. The Experiment is scheduled to run Monday through Friday from 8am to 4pm. The Experiment will continue the focus on probabilistic forecast generation over shorter time periods than current Storm Prediction Center operational products. A major effort has been made to coordinate convection-allowing ensemble configurations between contributing agencies, resulting in a Community Leveraged Unified Ensemble (CLUE) containing 81 members with 3 km grid spacing. This ensemble will be used heavily in the forecast process and be used in verification exercises to compare different ensemble design strategies. More information about the unique CLUE members can be found in the 2017 Operations Plan.