5.1
Severe weather display system
Loren Tobia, AccuWeather, Inc., State College, PA; and M. Smith and K. Reeves
Advancing technology has brought new tools that enable meteorologists to analyze severe weather and present hyper-local real-time updates to their viewers.
SelectWarn® generates a complete picture of severe weather in a native HD street-level environment by merging radar and lightning data, ground-truth reports, NWS polygon warnings, and a number of unique forecast and presentation tools that assist in tracking storms, identifying tornadoes, analyzing rain data for flooding and showing how future flooding will occur.
System tools include forecast time of arrival and cone of movement of severe weather, along with forecast lightning and annotation capabilities. SelectWarn's enhanced Level 2 NEXRAD helps meteorologists analyze and present severe weather information before it arrives.
The system's Animated Flood Inundation technology shows viewers, street by street, exactly how and where rivers will flood and crest. This technology can also help stations be first to air with breaking news coverage of flooding and evacuation areas. For example, KWCH-TV used this capability to analyze where flooding was going to occur. After noticing that a huge apartment complex was in the forecast flood zone, their News Director sent a crew to the location. As a result, KWCH was first to air not only with the story, but with dramatic live video of the evacuation.
Other unique system capabilities include: AccuRain®, which combines radar and rain gauge data to analyze storm data for flash flooding concerns; and EarthShake® earthquake data mapping.
Session 5, Severe Weather: Additional Challenges & Tools II
Monday, 22 June 2009, 3:30 PM-4:00 PM, Pacific Northwest Ballroom
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