Severe Storm NWP: the Good, the Bad and a Possible Future (Invited Presentation)

The experimental use of convective permitting forecast models over the past 10 years has opened the eyes of the severe weather forecast and research communities to the potential high value of this new form of forecast guidance. For the first time, we can view explicit predictions of convective phenomena, including supercells, squall lines, MCVs, bow echoes, etc., out to multiple days, and, sometimes, these forecasts are actually correct! As importantly, such forecasts have also offered at times new insights into the processes critical to severe weather phenomena, even helping in anticipating unusual, extreme events, such as the 8 May 2009 and 29 June 2012 derechoes. Of course, the limits of predictability preclude one from believing any single deterministic run. However, the experimental use of high-resolution ensembles has also suggested the potential value of probabilistic guidance for explicit severe weather events. In this set of talks, we will review the progress that has been made in explicit convective forecasting to date, emphasizing the capabilities at both the mesoscale and storm scale. We will offer some thoughts on the possible future prediction of high-impact weather events such as tornadoes, severe winds, and heavy rainfall through the use of kilometer scale, sub-hourly updated ensemble forecast systems that are currently under development.