Chasers and Scientists: Suggestions for Working Together

[Greg Blumberg]

The real trick with the mobile mesonets, is asking how accurate the data is that is being displayed. We could have false data as well as false reports being sent to NWS forecasters. By all means, I am for the usage of chaser mobile mesonets to contribute to the warning decision making environment, however we've got to think about the quality of the data we are sending. For example, if wind information were sent, we would have to consider the setup of the anemometer on the car and how the car's aerodynamic-ness would affect these measurements. I would think relaying temperature and dew point information would be much more accurate.

I also wanted to add that contributing your pictures and accounts online to some type of database would be very useful for the scientific community. I cannot count on my fingers how many researchers I know that use information contributed by chasers to reconstruct severe weather events.

 

[Robert Dewey]

eSpotter is being phased out...

What's it being replaced with? If I can't hash out a report directly to the NWSFO from the web, I guess I won't be submitting reports anymore...

 

[Jason Foster]

The real trick with the mobile mesonets, is asking how accurate the data is that is being displayed. We could have false data as well as false reports being sent to NWS forecasters. By all means, I am for the usage of chaser mobile mesonets to contribute to the warning decision making environment, however we've got to think about the quality of the data we are sending. For example, if wind information were sent, we would have to consider the setup of the anemometer on the car and how the car's aerodynamic-ness would affect these measurements. I would think relaying temperature and dew point information would be much more accurate.

This is the exact reason to get the various sides talking. The accuracy has to be there...otherwise it's pointless. But with various instruments and knowledge put out in projects like vortex2, I don't see why some sharing of information on how to build and use these probes, mobile mesonets, etc. Yes, some aren't going to give away all their research and work away for free, but there is plenty I see as being used by chasers without anything more than raw materials cost to build their own equipment with the help and suggestions of the ones who have built and/or engineered them before.

Of course this is only a little bit of the discussion that can possibly take place between scientists, researchers, government officials/NWS/NOAA, and chasers.

 

[Tyler Allison]

What about getting people who already have mobile mesonets display their data in realtime using the SN icons and interface? I did this with the mobile mesonets for V2 and it was amazingly helpful. I can provide some code if you need/want it.

We actually tested this early on and it worked great.

Problem is that none of the existing weather measuring companies (davis, etc) have software that can be extended to push updates to the SN. At least not easily.

Displaying the data is the easy part...getting it to the SN in a unified format is the hard part

-Tyler