NEBR: 1st State in the Nation with border-to-border Short Fuse Composite!

[Darren Addy]

If you will be chasing in or around Nebraska you'll be glad to know that we are the first State in the nation to get border-to-border coverage with the Short Fuse Composite:

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/oax/short/SFC1_latest.png
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/oax/short/SFC2_latest.png

I'm pleased to report that, thanks to OAX ITO Jay Laseman and the DDC's Mike Umscheid the Omaha NWS now (as of the last hour or so) has the Short Fuse Composite up and running at:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/oax/?n=shortfuse
Combined with the Rapid City NWS and Goodland, KS NWS coverage ( http://www.crh.noaa.gov/gld/?n=sfcimages ), Nebraska becomes the first State in the nation with border to border Short Fuse Composite coverage!
I've lost the link to the Rapid City page, but the individual latest images can be found here:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/unr/short/SFC1_latest.png
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/unr/short/SFC2_latest.png

The original (DDC) can be found at:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ddc/?n=shortfuse

If you are not familiar with the Short Fuse Composite, it gives you a real heads-up on where initiation is eminent, as well as what territory provides the most likely area for tornadoes within an hour or two. Besides looking out your windshield, it should be the last thing you look at before leaving your initial target location on chase day! Check out this Powerpoint to learn more about how it works:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ddc/research/short/shortfuse_part2.ppt
Roger Hill has known about it for a long time and his forecasting pages pay tribute to the usefulness of the Short Fuse Composite (follow the series of pages starting here.)

Between these offices' coverage areas for the Short Fuse Composite, Nebraska chasers have ALL of the areas closest to us covered.

I hope that more NWS offices will also install this product, increasing the coverage areas available.

 

[L.B. LaForce]

This is very new to me, never heard of this..im still trying to understand what exactly it is..? lol

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

It's a pretty excellent tool for finding likely initiation spots at a quick glance. I've seen it work in a few situations where I really wasn't sure where exactly to wait for the stacking CU -- it seems to call initiation spots about 2 hours or so before the towers go up. It's one of Mike Umscheid's personal projects -- one which very few chasers seem to know about, oddly enough.

 

[Rob H]

Research on this system by the DDC NWS has shown that thunderstorms moving into the primary area as outlined at the top of this page have an 85% probability of producing a tornado within one hour and a 65% within 2 hours.

With those claimed statistics, you'd think more people would be talking about this. I'm still reading over the PDFs and discussions, but it looks similar to the chase day 12Z hand analysis many live by, but continually updated throughout the course of the day. I didn't see any mention of it, but is the SFC being used for determining warning polygons in any way?

Either way, really cool stuff, and convenient for me that it pretty much covers what I consider to be my reasonable travel boundaries for chasing

 

[Gene Moore]

Over the years I've seen numerous neat projects like this come and go from NWS sites. Even the original DDC Short Fuse Comp from years ago has a history of being and on and off product....depending on who was "supporting" it at that office. Does this one have the support of upper management, will the office stay with it? Learning to use something like this, depending on it and then having it pulled can be a pain.

 

[Darren Addy]

I hear ya Gene, but that is one reason that I have been trying to push awareness about this product on Stormtrack. Nobody has much incentive to support (or install in the first place) a product that isn't being used by anyone. And (let's face it) this is a product that isn't going to be used by the "general public" - they wouldn't know what to do with it.

However, the people who frequent this board should. I think that some of those that do understand it may be keeping the information to themselves. Maybe they feel that understanding it gives them some sort of edge (and I'd agree with them) but I'd like anybody willing to learn about it the same edge.

Part of the reason that it is unknown is that, up until recently, it was only available for the DDC office. Then GLD adopted it and then Rapid City. I don't know if they had requests for it, or if the forecasters there were looking for an edge in anticipating initiation, or if there are chasers in those offices who wanted the tool for their own reasons.

Mike Umscheid is the guy that rewrote the program (which, as you saw from the Roger Hill links has been around for a while) and made it available in the software repository available to all NWS offices. As most of us know, he's a chaser and ST member and mentions it often on his blog and other places.

Ultimately, the support (and installation) of the product comes down to the individual NWS ITOs. Scott Reiter is the DDC ITO and I know he has been instrumental in keeping it working at DDC and helping other offices get it up and running. The OAX ITO, Jay Laseman, has shown he is progressive in getting this up and going for the Omaha office. We can take the time to let our office's ITOs (and other personnel) know how much we appreciate their efforts. We can also drop them a (courteous) line if we notice something not working properly. (Something as simple as an rsync permissions change can stop the Central Server from being able to update the current images for a particular NWS image folder, for example.) They may not be keeping a close eye on it (what with everything else they need to take care of) but will be glad to know if something isn't working right so they can troubleshoot it and prioritize a fix.

Everything comes down to people, and so if you use a product, let your NWS office know you use it and find it valuable. You may find those products stick around longer.

This particular product may stay around longer if it continues to spread in coverage areas. As a northern chaser I'd love to see Topeka and Des Moines be the next to come on board.

 

[Darren Addy]

With OAX's coverage into SE South Dakota, if Aberdeen would add the product then South Dakota would have border-to-border coverage (and some of SW Minnesota and SE North Dakota, as well). With DDC and GLD covering western Kansas, TOP or ICH could complete the border-to-border coverage for Kansas. Des Moines would provide Iowa border-to-border by itself (I think). That means we are three offices' installations away from having 4 States fully covered (and peripheral States partially covered, such as Missouri, Minnesota, Colorado, Oklahoma, and North Dakota. I think it would be a reasonable goal to have the northern and southern plains covered 100% by Spring of 2010. With that kind of coverage we could learn a lot about how good of a predictor, the SFC really is.

 

[Jeff Duda]

Darren,
Actually, to get full state-wide coverage of the short fuse composite, five WFOs (OAX, DMX, FSD, ARX, DVN) would have to adopt the product to their sites. However, if DMX did start using the product, then there would be a significant portion of central Iowa covered with it.

 

[Darren Addy]

Darren,
Actually, to get full state-wide coverage of the short fuse composite, five WFOs (OAX, DMX, FSD, ARX, DVN) would have to adopt the product to their sites. However, if DMX did start using the product, then there would be a significant portion of central Iowa covered with it.

You haven't ever actually looked at a Short Fuse Composite coverage map, have you Jeff. The graphics generated by the SFC go beyond the CWAs. By the way, I've already gotten a positive response from another ITO. Hopefully we'll have another coverage increase to report before next week is over.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Darren,
Actually, to get full state-wide coverage of the short fuse composite, five WFOs (OAX, DMX, FSD, ARX, DVN) would have to adopt the product to their sites. However, if DMX did start using the product, then there would be a significant portion of central Iowa covered with it.

Have you seen how large the SFC coverage areas are? They cover much more territory than a single WFO has dominion over. OAX's map covers half of Nebraska and half of Iowa on its own.

 

[Jeff Duda]

Gotcha. Wrong mindset. Yes, I've seen them.

 

[Darren Addy]

Small (but sorta significant) update: OAX's ITO Jay Laseman ROCKS. He's solved the javascript problem for archived SFC images and so now OAX is the only office (I could find) that has this feature running. (Rollover the previous hour links and the images change so you can see the progression of events. Very cool!) He's also created a "Chaser" page. Thanks again to the DDC guys (Mike Umscheid and ITO Scott Reiter) for the assistance they make available to the ITOs setting this up. If I was looking for a Master's Thesis topic, the expansion of this parameter to more regions makes even more Case Studies like this one now possible! PS...OAX's Short Fuse Composite page is perfected just in time to watch this afternoon's events unfold.

 

[Darren Addy]

Adding to our list of NWS ITOs that rock: Darrel Smith of TOP.

I'm pleased to pass along the report that Topeka is now up and running with the Short Fuse Composite, giving us eastern Kansas and western Missouri. That makes Kansas the 2nd state in the nation to have border-to-border coverage of the SFC. Kansas also leads the nation in the number of NWS offices carrying the SFC product at 3 (DDC, Goodland, and now Topeka).

Topeka's SFC page: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/top/?n=shortfuse

 

[mikegeukes]

NWS Topeka Short Fuse Composites
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/top/?n=shortfuse

Mike

 

[John Cameron]

is OUN on board? FWD?