88th Annual Meeting (20-24 January 2008)

Tuesday, 22 January 2008: 8:30 AM
Use of the LEAD Portal for On-Demand Severe Weather Prediction
206 (Ernest N. Morial Convention Center)
Keith A. Brewster, CAPS/Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman, OK; and D. Weber, K. W. Thomas, K. K. Droegemeier, Y. Wang, M. Xue, S. Marru, D. Gannon, J. Alameda, B. F. Jewett, J. S. Kain, S. J. Weiss, and M. Christie
Poster PDF (549.4 kB)
The LEAD Portal was used in real time for on-demand forecasting of severe weather during the 2007 Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) Spring Experiment. The Portal is web-based and uses service oriented architecture to provide users with capabilities to access and analyze meteorological data and to prepare, conduct, and monitor WRF forecasts as well as archive, analyze, and verify WRF forecast data. Two 9-hour WRF forecasts, initialized at 15Z over re-locatable regional domains, were submitted once a day during a portion of the two month HWT experiment. The forecast domains were centered on areas of elevated chances for severe weather occurrence as determined by a LEAD project meteorologist using information supplied from Mesoscale Discussions issued by the NOAA/Storm Prediction Center and/or daily HWT weather briefings. The initial conditions for the two forecasts were either interpolated from the LEAD ARPS Data Analysis System (ADAS) 10km CONUS 15Z analysis or from the 3-hour NAM 12Z forecast. The lateral boundary conditions were extracted from the 12Z NAM forecasts using the ARPS EXT2ARPS software package. Due to resource limitations, the WRF forecast data were not available for comparison with other model guidance prior to afternoon convective activity, but the forecast data such as temperature, dew point temperature, winds and precipitation were available for comparison with observations and other model forecasts in near-realtime. This test validated the use of the LEAD Portal for on-demand forecasting of severe weather. Preliminary assessments of forecast skill and recommendations for future on-demand testing will be discussed at the conference.

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