Investigating thunderstorm wind damage with a high-resolution verification dataset

The National Severe Storms Laboratory's Severe Hazards Analysis and Verification Experiment (SHAVE) began verifying wind damage on high temporal and spatial resolution scales in 2007. During the first three years of wind damage data collection, the details of the reports focused on tree/tree limb size and simple descriptions of structural damage (i.e., "small shed destroyed"). During the summer of 2010, the SHAVE wind call script was modified in order to increase the detail of the reports in the archive. The new script focused on concise questions which offered parallels to the Enhanced Fujita scale damage indicators and degrees of damage. This modification to the call script and the high resolution nature of the reports allows researchers to compare familiar wind damage signatures from high resolution radar data to a more encompassing and detailed damage swath than can be found in Storm Data. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate radar signatures associated with severe wind and/or wind damage. Wind damage swaths collected during SHAVE were used as the verification for these signatures. In total, 43 SHAVE report swaths collected between 2008 and 2010 were analyzed. Additionally, near-storm environment (NSE) model fields were compared to the storms in an attempt to determine which parameters displayed significant trends in widespread severe wind events. This paper summarizes the relationships between differing storm types, radar signatures, and NSE fields while discussing how SHAVE reports can be implemented when verifying severe wind damage events.