Nowcast Forecast Improvements from Post-Processing Usage of Total Lightning and Dense Mesonet Observations

Unique Earth Networks Total Lightning Network and dense mesonet observations were used to enhance nowcast forecasts (0-6 hours) with the algorithm logic used by Global Weather Corporation's proprietary technology and exclusively within the Earth Networks ENcast forecast solutions. Integration of these observations were shown to improve hourly forecast error in certain forecast variables by up to 80% as compared to forecasts that did not include the data. This presentation will outline the issues and challenges of using and integrating this additional data, along with error analysis and recommendations for possible future improvements and derivative products.