Utilizing Tornado Climatology and Storm Environment Parameters to Enhance the Existing Tornado Detection Strategy in North Carolina

The ability of ground-based radars to detect potential severe weather serves a key purpose in supporting the National Weather Service’s mission of providing information to protect lives and property, and enhance the national economy. The United States’ network of Doppler radars provides a continuous suite of data and products which allow meteorologists, in tandem with other observational information, to issue watches and warnings in advance of and during severe weather events. This study to date has developed a tornado climatology for the state of North Carolina, and is now poised to investigate the pre-storm environments of significant-tornado-producing thunderstorms and their radar signatures for the same region. In addition, a number of radar parameters such as maximum rotational velocity, width of the rotation, depth of the storm, and more will be analyzed in this study for each tornado event. It is hypothesized that examining the radar characteristics and mesoscale environment of these storms will help identify local thresholds and nuances, which can thereby improve warning decision-making strategies, enhance detection of tornado events, and benefit forecast offices as well as emergency managers in the state of North Carolina and other Mid-Atlantic states.