Evaluation of high-resolution forecasts of severe weather: case study examples

For the past two convective seasons, NCAR has been running 4-km WRF forecasts over the central United States. For some events, such as bow echoes or squall lines, the forecasts have done quite well. For other events, the model performance was poor. For the severe weather episodes of May 10 to 12, 2004, WRF forecasts were poor. A detailed examination of this event using both observations and forecasts will be presented, with a goal of determining how the forecasts could be improved.