Analysis and Forecasting at High Spatial and Temporal Resolutions

During the Experimental Warning Program (EWP) of NOAA's Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) 2014, the NOAA ESRL/GSD's variational version of Local Analysis and Prediction System (vLAPS) was run to produce frequently updated (15 minute), fine scale (1 km) analyses, and the analyses were used to initialize the Advanced Research Weather Research Forecast (WRF) model (ARW). The analysis and forecast domain is on demand and re-locatable. This sub-regional domain is re-localized everyday based on the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) day one convective outlook for areas with potentially high impact weather events. The forecast runs every hour with 3-6 lead-time, and output at 1 km spatial and 15-minute temporal resolutions. The goal is to bridge the gap between the Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) longer-range forecasts that may take an hour or more to “spin-up” and applications in situational awareness and very short term forecast (nowcasting). In this presentation, we will select several supercell storms to evaluate vLAPS analyses and nowcasting skills, and to highlight the real-time performance of vLAPS including some feedback from forecasters; issues identified, and discuss plans for future improvement.