Enhancements to Storm Prediction Center Convective Outlooks

This presentation will summarize a few developmental efforts nearing completion that will enhance convective outlooks and the real-time capabilities of the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) by increasing the capacity to support and drive new applied research from the community. Specifically, these efforts aim to provide more of SPC forecast products in standardized geospatial data formats with high fidelity and internal consistency. These efforts include:

• Conversion of outlook line segments to vectorized polygons
• Conversion of outlook probability levels to continuous spatial probabilities
• Refinement of first-guess probabilistic guidance to support forecaster-guidance interdependence and efficiency.

A detailed verification and analysis of convective outlook probability trends using these new methods will be provided, to reveal the robustness of the approach and demonstrate new capabilities. Preliminary analysis shows a decreasing trend in the annual issuance frequency and areal coverage of Day 1 convective outlook categories/probabilities.