Formulas are obtained for observed circulation around and contraction rate of a Doppler radar grid cell within a surface of constant launch angle. The cell values near unresolved axisymmetric vortices vary greatly with beam-to-flow angle. To obtain reliable standard measures of vortex strength we bilinearly interpolate data to points on circles of specified radii concentric with circulation centers and compute the Doppler circulations around and the areal contraction rates of these circles from the field of mean Doppler velocities. These parameters are proposed for detection of strong tornadoes and mesocyclonic winds. The circulation and mean convergence around the Union City, Oklahoma, tornado of 24 May 1973 are computed. After doubling to compensate for the unobserved wind component, the circulation (1.1 × 105 m2 s−1) agrees with a previous photogrammetric measurement. The mature tornado was embedded in a region, 6 km in diameter, of nearly uniform strong convergence (~5.5 × 10−3 s−1) without a simultaneous mesocyclone. A model of a convergent vortex inputted to a Doppler radar emulator reproduces these results. Moving the model vortex shows that for a WSR-88D with superresolution, the circulation is relatively insensitive to range and azimuth. WSR-88D data of the 31 May 2013 El Reno storm are also analyzed. The tornado formed in a two-celled mesocyclone with strong inflow 5 km away. In the next 8 min the circulation near the axis doubled and the areal contraction rate at 5 km increased by 50%. This signified a large probability of strong tornadoes embedded in powerful storm-scale winds.
Fierro, Alexandre O.; Wang, Yunheng; Gao, Jidong; Mansell, Edward R.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Mon. Wea. Rev. (2019) 147 (11): 4045–4069.
Description:
The assimilation of water vapor mass mixing ratio derived from total lightning data from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) within a three-dimensional variational (3DVAR) system is evaluated for the analysis and short-term forecast (≤6 h) of ...
Weckwerth, Tammy M., 1966-; Hanesiak, John; Wilson, James W.; Trier, Stanley B.; Degelia, Samuel K.; Gallus, William A.; Roberts, Rita D.; Wang, Xuguang;
Nocturnal convection initiation (NCI) is more difficult to anticipate and forecast than daytime convection initiation (CI). A major component of the Plains Elevated Convection at Night (PECAN) field campaign in the U.S. Great Plains was to intensivel...
Weather surveillance radars routinely detect smoke of various origin. Of particular significance to the meteorological community are wildfires in forests and/or prairies. For example, one responsibility of the National Weather Service in the USA is t...
High-sensitivity weather radars easily detect nonmeteorological phenomena characterized by weak radar returns. Fireworks are the example presented here. To understand radar observations, an experiment was conducted in which the National Severe Storms...
Deadly tornadoes are rare events, but that level of rarity varies with many factors. In this work, we summarize and update past research on tornado fatalities, and also discuss the environments of deadly tornadoes both from the perspective of proximi...
Erlingis, Jessica M.; Gourley, Jonathan J.; Basara, Jeffrey B. (Jeffrey Brent), 1973-;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
J. Hydrometeor. (2019) 20 (8): 1511–1531.
Description:
Backward trajectories were derived from North American Regional Reanalysis data for 19 253 flash flood reports published by the National Weather Service to determine the along-path contribution of the land surface to the moisture budget for flash flo...
A potential replacement candidate for the aging operational WSR-88D infrastructure currently in place is the phased array radar (PAR) system. The current WSR-88Ds take ~5 min to produce a full volumetric scan of the atmosphere, whereas PAR technology...
To improve severe thunderstorm prediction, a novel pseudo-observation and assimilation approach involving water vapor mass mixing ratio is proposed to better initialize NWP forecasts at convection-resolving scales. The first step of the algorithm ide...
A real-time, weather adaptive, dual-resolution, hybrid Warn-on-Forecast (WoF) analysis and forecast system using the WRF-ARW forecast model has been developed and implemented. The system includes two components, an ensemble analysis and forecast comp...
J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol. (2020) 59 (6): 1051–1068.
Description:
This study analyzes the microphysics and precipitation pattern of Hurricanes Harvey (2017) and Florence (2018) in both the eyewall and outer rainband regions. From the retrievals by a satellite red–green–blue scheme, the outer rainbands show a st...
Jahn, David E.; Gallus, William A.; Nguyen, Phong T. T.; Pan, Qiyun; Cetin, Kristen; Byon, Eunshin; Manuel, Lance; Zhou, Yuyu; Jahani, Elham;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Atmosphere 2019, 10(12), 727.
Description:
Climate studies based on global climate models (GCMs) project a steady increase in annual average temperature and severe heat extremes in central North America during the mid-century and beyond. However, the agreement of observed trends with climate ...
The potential future installation of a multifunction phased-array radar (MPAR) network will provide capabilities of case-specific adaptive scanning. Knowing the impacts adaptive scanning may have on short-term forecasts will influence scanning strate...
J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol. (2020) 37 (6): 1103–1116.
Description:
Severe thunderstorms and their associated tornadoes pose significant threats to life and property, and using radar data to accurately measure the rotational velocity of circulations in thunderstorms is essential for appropriate, timely warnings. One ...
Lawson, John R.; Galllus, William A.; Potvin, Corey K.;
Published Date:
2020
Source:
Atmosphere 2020, 11(4), 384.
Description:
The bow echo, a mesoscale convective system (MCS) responsible for much hail and wind damage across the United States, is associated with poor skill in convection-allowing numerical model forecasts. Given the decrease in convection-allowing grid spaci...
A synoptic analysis and soil moisture (SM) sensitivity experiment is conducted on the record-breaking rainstorm in Texas associated with Hurricane Harvey on 26–30 August 2017. The rainstorm occurred as the moist tropical air mass associated with Ha...
Jones, Thomas A.; Skinner, Patrick; Yussouf, Nusrat; Knopfmeier, Kent; Reinhart, Anthony; Wang, Xuguang; Bedka, Kristopher; Smith, William Jr.; Palikonda, Rabindra;
Published Date:
2020
Source:
Mon. Wea. Rev. (2020) 148 (5): 1829–1859.
Description:
The increasing maturity of the Warn-on-Forecast System (WoFS) coupled with the now operational GOES-16 satellite allows for the first time a comprehensive analysis of the relative impacts of assimilating GOES-16 all-sky 6.2-, 6.9-, and 7.3-μm channe...
In idealized, horizontally homogeneous, cloud model simulations of convective storms, the action of surface friction can substantially modify the near-ground environmental wind profile over time owing to the lack of a large-scale pressure gradient fo...
Loken, Eric D.; Clark, Adam J.; McGovern, Amy; Flora, Montgomery; Knopfmeier, Kent;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Wea. Forecasting (2019) 34 (6): 2017–2044.
Description:
Most ensembles suffer from underdispersion and systematic biases. One way to correct for these shortcomings is via machine learning (ML), which is advantageous due to its ability to identify and correct nonlinear biases. This study uses a single rand...
Kong, Rong; Xue, Ming; Fierro, Alexandre O.; Jung, Youngsun; Liu, Chengsi; Mansell, Edward R.; MacGorman, D. R.;
Published Date:
2020
Source:
Mon. Wea. Rev. (2020) 148 (5): 2111–2133.
Description:
The recently launched Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite “R-series” (GOES-R) satellites carry the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) that measures from space the total lightning rate in convective storms at high spatial and tempo...
Flora, Montgomery L.; Skinner, Patrick S.; Potvin, Corey K.; Reinhart, Anthony E.; Jones, Thomas A.; Yussouf, Nusrat; Knopfmeier, Kent H.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Wea. Forecasting (2019) 34 (6): 1721–1739.
Description:
An object-based verification method for short-term, storm-scale probabilistic forecasts was developed and applied to mesocyclone guidance produced by the experimental Warn-on-Forecast System (WoFS) in 63 cases from 2017 to 2018. The probabilistic mes...
Potvin, Corey K.; Broyles, Chris; Skinner, Patrick S.; Brooks, Harold E.; Rasmussen, Erik;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Wea. Forecasting (2019) 34 (1): 15–30.
Description:
The Storm Prediction Center (SPC) tornado database, generated from NCEI’s Storm Data publication, is indispensable for assessing U.S. tornado risk and investigating tornado–climate connections. Maximizing the value of this database, however, requ...
Tornado events from the National Weather Service (NWS) verification database are examined for the period 2006-2017 against radar coverage, the latter binned in terms of events inside and outside the range implied by the 6000 ft above ground level (AG...
J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol. (2020) 37 (6): 1103–1116.
Description:
Severe thunderstorms and their associated tornadoes pose significant threats to life and property, and using radar data to accurately measure the rotational velocity of circulations in thunderstorms is essential for appropriate, timely warnings. One ...
A prototype quantitative precipitation estimate (QPE) algorithm that utilizes specific attenuation A and specific differential phase KDP was developed for inclusion into the Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS) system and the Weather Surveillance Radar-19...