Advancing Hazards Forecasting and Decision Support through NOAA Testbeds and Proving Ground

The Threats-In-Motion (TIM) concept for severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings aims to provide more equitable lead time for all locations downstream of the storm. Allowing the warning to move along with the storm - as opposed to issuing new warnings - results in better warning management for the forecaster, cleaner display, simplified messaging, and an increase in lead time for areas that are in the path of the storm but outside of the current warned area. (Stumpf and Gerard 2021)

TIM work began around 2016 and has matured considerably in that time. The initial vision was to have one-minute updates to the warning location (provided by software internal to Hazard Services) in between forecaster updates to the warning. A variation of this concept was to enhance the current WarnGen-like workflow allowing the forecaster to nudge the polygon along and reissue when they deemed necessary. This latter approach has been dubbed “Tiny” TIM since it is a smaller step from the current paradigm than the more revolutionary “Taller” TIM approach mentioned prior.

This presentation illustrates the latest software feature improvements and bug fixes to both Tiny and Taller TIM that were tested in the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed in separate experiments in the Spring of 2023. A companion presentation will focus on HWT exercises and outcomes. This talk will additionally cover recent developments that improve the operational readiness of both versions of TIM.