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

[Darren Addy]

The OUN ITO has been contacted, but no reply as of yet. DFW has not been contacted by me... can't speak for anyone else. My goal was (more or less) to grow the coverage outward from the NWS offices that already offer it. My thinking was that an ITO would be more inclined to offer the product if it was offered "next door" in coverage area. But that doesn't mean that ANY office that installed it would not be welcomed.

By the way, I got a favorable response this morning from DMX ITO Shane Searcy. He worked at DDC with the original originator of the SFC, Jim Johnson and knows the DDC ITO. So look for border-to-border Iowa coverage (hopefully in the very near future)!

 

[Christopher E. Kincaid]

I looked for fuse at ILX (Cent IL) and it does not appear to be used there. Is there any other place that might have it for IL?

 

[Darren Addy]

I looked for fuse at ILX (Cent IL) and it does not appear to be used there. Is there any other place that might have it for IL?

Hi Christopher,
I believe that you can check if your local NWS is offering the SFC ("unadvertised") by replacing the three letter NWS station abbreviation in the URLs below:

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

In the URL above, "ddc" is the code for Dodge City, KS. You can get the others by looking at the links in this page, which lists all of the NWS offices in the U.S.. You can see that there are two offices in IL: ilx and lot. I have not found any office that are running the SFC "unadvertised" but I haven't done an exhaustive search.

If we had a choice, we'd want an office centrally located in the State to carry the SFC, because it covers a lot more than their CWA. In fact, a NWS office like DMX would probably cover the entire state and more. (Obviously this depends upon the shape of the State, to some extent).

I requested in this ST thread that Stormtrackers (Stormtrakkies? ) request the SFC from their local offices. (You can see what a huge response that thread generated - at least on a discussion level. ) At that time, I suggested sending the email to the office's webmaster. I have since learned that the key guy is the ITO (Information Technology Officer). It is not clear to me if the ITO is always the same as the webmaster. Google for your office's staff page and get the name of the ITO. Then you can do a Google search for "ITO's Name" (in quotes) with "@noaa.gov" (in quotes) and chances are you can find their email address (if it isn't right there on the NWS Office "Staff" page.)

When you send an email requesting the SFC, I have a few suggestions:
1) Don't be demanding. You are making a request and they don't have to do anything.
2) Be appreciative of the work and service they provide. (Let's face it, we of all people, are but like most people - they probably don't hear "thanks" as often as they should.)
3) Appeal to the fact that this product shows a lot of promise in both identifying areas of initiation (in the hour or two before it occurs) and in identifying areas where storms may go tornadic if they move into that area.
4) Let them know that, while this may not appeal to the "general public" there are a significant number of "weather enthusiasts" that would appreciate its availability. (And their own office's forecasters may find it very useful).
5) You could also appeal to the researcher in them. Having the SFC available in more areas mean that we can see how good it really is (and maybe how to even improve its performance) if we can have more geographical area covered by it. (By "we" I mean anybody interested in studying it, and especially students of meteorology).
6) Make your request a bit time-sensitive by suggesting how useful it would be to have "for the upcoming severe weather season".
7) Mention how coverage is increasing. You can mention the States covered and the offices that have added it. (OAX and TOP are the most recent additions, and hopefully we can also point to DMZ in the very near future).

I believe that almost any NWS office would benefit themselves and their weather enthusiast "constituents" by having the SFC installed and publicly available, but my immediate goal would be to have "tornado alley" blanketed by Spring of 2010. I think if more of us let the office's ITOs know that we feel it is valuable, they might make it more of a priority. I think the more of us who let them know we would appreciate it, the more likely they are to consider it.

Right now, the coverage areas favor northern chasers much more than southern chasers, but I have no doubt that the southern office ITOs would be just as willing to add this product, if we ask nicely.

 

[al pietrycha]

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.

This month marks the 4th year the SF Composite has been running at the GLD WFO. In late June the domain you currently see from GLD will be expanded by at least a factor of two.

Another item you might like is the recent inclusion of the WRF-ARW.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/gld/?n=localwrf
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lbf/?n=arwviewer

Cycle times and products vary from office to office depending on CPU horse power.

--Al

 

[Darren Addy]

I'd also like to add a little personal antidote concerning the SFC and last weekend's activities across the southern plains. Last Saturday, you may recall, an outbreak was expected in western OK. I have not yet chased that far south and was not chasing that day but hoped to get a peek at the events via radar, etc.

Long story short, I didn't get to look at what had transpired until about 9:45 PM when I looked at the SPC's Storm Reports page. I was surprised to see NO tornadoes reported in OK. (A couple in KS and one in IA, if memory serves).
Well, I'm trying to learn to "read" the SFC, so went to DDC's short fuse composite page next. I didn't want to be swayed by what was happening on radar, so I purposedly avoided looking at that.

It appeared to me that the area to the SW - W/SW of Enid was primed. I checked on a map to see where it was that I was looking and the closest town to the area was Fairview. Then I looked at radar and saw storms were approaching that area. I emailed Ryan McGinnis and told him that "it looks like OK is going to get their tornadoes today yet". He looked and agreed.

Over the next 4 hours there were numerous tornadoes and tornado warnings for the area. So I guess what I'm saying is that it could be worth your while to learn to read the SFC graphics: not just to determine where initiation is likely, but even in-situ - to determine where the environment is most favorable for existing storms to go tornadic. That night was an eye-opener for me!

 

[Darren Addy]

This month marks the 4th year the SF Composite has been running at the GLD WFO. In late June the domain you currently see from GLD will be expanded by at least a factor of two.

Another item you might like is the recent inclusion of the WRF-ARW.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/gld/?n=localwrf
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lbf/?n=arwviewer

Cycle times and products vary from office to office depending on CPU horse power.

--Al

Thanks for the correction and additional information, Al! I'll also check out the links you've provided. Sounds like you guys are a pretty progressive office.

 

[jshields]

i had some questions on reading the 2 charts that are shown on the short fuse composite page. these were from yesterday afternoon around 530, when there was a tornado watch in eastern ne. the storms were all southeast of here in southern iowa, and that was where they were continually developing. even out of those storms there really wasn't any real severe weather. on composite 1, there is the brighter red area in eastern ne outlined by other shades of color and then a dark gray "border" line. on the 2nd chart, there really doesn't seem to be a target area. my questions are this
in the first chart, is the red area the forecast prime target area for development or does that represent something else? there is also a number "70" in the middle of that area. is that representing a 70% chance of tstorm initiation? is that really that high of a percentage? in the 2nd chart, i see it shows the cape, wind barbs, and lapse rates. but is there a target area outlined in this chart that i'm not seeing? also are the low level lapse rates multiplied by 10 in the 2nd chart? finally, if the first chart isn't showing the target area, then i'm assuming you're supposed to combine the info from the 2 charts into an area that has the best values of all these crieteria?! yesterday there were no storms that developed in that red area. i know this isn't 100% accurate though, but still there were no storms at all sorry if this is confusing, thanks in advance for the info!

 

[Jeff Duda]

The text at the bottom of the images tells you what is being displayed. The text on them is in an AWIPS text style (if you've ever worked, volunteered, or seen activity on the AWIPS system at an NWS office, that's what I'm referring to). I can't read exactly what those images say because they're too small, but the current shortfuse composite from OAX shows, in image 1:
1) Surface Wind barbs
2) Theta-e contours (in green)
3) some warm advection parameter (contoured in pink)
4) another warm advection parameter (contoured in white)
5) The colors are given by the product that has "(image)" leading the text, and so in this case is moisture convergence. The border you were referring to is just a certain break in the color contours, probably for the purpose of delineating contour values and separating colors (green covers a wide range of values in the image)

In image 2:
1) 850mb, 500mb, and 250mb wind barbs
2) SBCAPE contours (in white)
3) The colors in the second image give the 0-2.5km lapse rate in units of deg C/km * 10 with darker contours marked as well

In the first image, the "70" is marking a contour, probably of the warm advection parameter.

Be careful of how you look at convergence: it doesn't have to indicate the place where thunderstorms would develop, just a place where lots of surface convergence is occurring (which does imply a likelihood of parcels being forced to their LFC).

The second chart really isn't pointing out any specific area, but then again neither is the first chart. It is your job to understand the parameters plotted and to put them together using the given maps to decide where you think something will happen. Using that information, it does seem as yesterday was a good case in which the best stuff didn't happen where the parameters were best necessarily. So you have to be diligent in choosing which parameters to follow and understand singly what each one says. Hope this helped. Good hunting!

 

[Darren Addy]

jshields: The first link in this thread has links to some help in understanding the SFC. If you scroll down most of the NWS Short Fuse Composite pages you'll find the same links.

 

[jshields]

jshields: The first link in this thread has links to some help in understanding the SFC. If you scroll down most of the NWS Short Fuse Composite pages you'll find the same links.

yeah i looked through that presentation, and in the powerpoint they outlined the specific areas to look at for initiation. so the main thing that i wasn't sure of was if that was an outline that was added by mike and jim in the powerpoint and therefore its all up to interpretation by the user, or if the target area is circled in some chart that already shows us. in other words, does the local wfo do all the work for us?!! this was probably wishful thinking on my part but in my head i imagined a map that would show us all the information AND a target area already "chosen" for us chasers

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

jshields: The first link in this thread has links to some help in understanding the SFC. If you scroll down most of the NWS Short Fuse Composite pages you'll find the same links.

One BIG thing: do you think this could be used effectively by television meteorologists? Having them take a look at this modeling page can make them very effective translators for the public: "we're taking a look at [stuff Joe Public doesn't understand] here and [more gibberish] here, which means that we're expecting that some powerful storms might develop here and possibly even here and move in this direction over the next couple of hours [oh! that's where I live! better not go out on the golf course this afternoon.]"

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

Also, with IA half-covered by OAX, the best place for convincing sweet-talk would actually be DVN IMO, since that would also cover the rest of Iowa as well as a broad reach of Illinois, including areas where storms will develop and move into favorable environments around Chicago (think the wedge in the suburbs last year as the key example).

 

[Zach Chappell]

Talked with ABR and they said they would look into it... not sure how long or if they will do it but they said it should be pretty easy to setup.

 

[Darren Addy]

That is excellent, Zach! Good work on taking the initiative.

One note regarding initiation and the SFC. (Someone more learned on this subject, feel free to jump in or correct me). You don't need the overlap areas discussed in the SFC powerpoint to predict initiation - that was about predicting areas for tornadoes.

If you look at Graphic 1 you will see the colors of where the moisture is pooling. Check a satellite graphic and you'll see that this normally corresponds to where the a cumulous field will be forming (if it hasn't already). Initiation will occur where the lift can overcome any CIN. So use Graphic 2 to help determine where that might be with the Where the background color goes to grey the low-level lapse rate is enough to overcome. (Earlier versions of the SFC used CIN, but this was improved by the use of the Low-level Lapse Rate instead. See this DDC page for an explanation.

(By the way, this is the sort of thing I think comes from wider adoption of the SFC - further enhancements/improvements from greater observations tied to the use of the product.)

Clearly, the sooner you can anticipate the area where initiation is going to occur you can take storm motions into account and (if you have a choice of targets) choose one that will be moving into one of those areas where the three parameters overlap (as described in the Powerpoints) and be in a primed tornado production environment.

You are probably correct regarding less overlap if DVN instead of DMX installed the SFC. However, overlap is certainly not a bad thing for a couple of reasons, and I'm hopeful that in the near future we have a LOT of overlap as more stations bring the SFC onboard:

1) If a NWS office has the SFC installed, it make their own office's forecasters job a little easier if they use the SFC themselves. Much better than looking at graphics from one office to see their western CWA and another to see the eastern CWA.

2) Comparing two station's graphics for an area of overlap gives you a better picture than one. As you will notice if you compare some overlapping SFC graphics, there can be a difference in the quality of the data displayed on the graphics. This is due to the "garbage in/garbage out" principle. In the installation instructions, Mike suggests "blacklisting" stations that are clearly have more unreliable data. (I don't mean NWS offices here... if you go to Mesowest Data and choose "All Networks" and map some parameter you will always find a few stations that are clearly not working properly. If you include the data they provide in some algorithm - like the one that generates Theta-E lines, for example - you're going to get some weird isopleths). So by eliminating the sampling of those unreliable stations by the SFC, you get better data in and thus better graphics out.

IMHO, more overlap is always a good thing. Just because DMX is going to have the SFC doesn't mean that DVN shouldn't - and (I think) provides even more reason for DVN to consider doing so.