An Overview of the 2018 Experimental Warning Program at the Hazardous Weather Testbed

The Experimental Warning Program (EWP) is an entity of the Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) whose goal is to improve National Weather Service (NWS) severe weather warnings by testing new products. For the past 12 years the EWP has brought researchers, developers, NWS forecasters, private companies, emergency managers, social scientists, and broadcast meteorologists together in Norman, OK to evaluate and provide feedback on how experimental products and software contribute to the severe weather warning paradigm.

In 2018, the EWP hosted 5 formal experiments over the course of 16 weeks. In total, 28 forecasters, 10 weather broadcasters, and 8 emergency managers participated in these experiments. Among the experiments in 2018 were: (1) the Hazard Services – PHI Experiment, in which probabilistic guidance for hail, wind, and tornado was evaluated by NWS forecasters in AWIPS-2 during displaced realtime cases, the Probabilistic Hazard Information Experiment for Broadcasters (2) and Emergency Managers (3) which used the Enhanced Data Display (EDD) and Gibson Ridge to analyze probabilistic hazard guidance from forecasters to make real-life decisions, (4) the GOES-16 / JPSS Experiment, in which various satellite products and Geostationary Lightning Mapper visualizations were tested, and the HWT/EWP hosted the (5) HMT Hydro Experiment where forecasters used AWIPS-2, WES2Bridge, and Hazard Services to evaluate MRMS/FLASH products. Based on the evaluation and feedback, the EWP provides a vital component in the successful transition between research and operations.