The Secretary of Commerce authorized the full scale deployment of the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) on April 10, 1998. The decision will equip NWS field offices and national centers with AWIPS equipment that will be installed over the next 15 months. A press release on the decision is available at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/pa/.
NWS is currently negotiating the exact deployment schedule with Litton/PRC Inc. A coordinated deployment schedule will be available by May 31, 1998. An estimated month by month schedule for each site is available on the web at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/msm/awips/awipsmsm.htm.
Coded messages for soundings disseminated from NWS upper air stations using the Microcomputer Automatic Radio Theodolite System are not fully compliant with World Meteorological Organization standards. Specifically, the WMO abbreviated heading and placement of the WMO station index in the coded messages are incorrect. Furthermore a required cloud observation taken at the time of the upper air sounding is missing from the report. Plans for the NWS to correct the upper air encoding can be found under the late breaking news of the IM home page.
Derived product imagery (DPI) from the GOES 8-10 sounders is available on the web at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMMS) home page at: http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/realtime/realtime.html. The display compares co-located DPI of precipitable water, lifted index, and cloud top pressure from GOES 8 and GOES 10 for the latest 6 hour period. The two panel "java-applet" allows synchronized animation of loops. Generally, the two sounders show similar patterns in the product fields, although the GOES 10 display adds more continuity with its rapid viewing.
GOES imagery of the March 29, 1998 Minnesota tornado outbreak have been posted on the CIMMS GOES Gallery at: http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/misc/980329.html. A pronounced warm wake/enhanced V cloud top signature is evident on 15 minute GOES 8 infrared imagery about 10 minutes prior to the first tornado report, and about 30 minutes before the initial reports on 5 minute GOES 10 IR imagery. GOES sounder products depict the unstable and moist air mass over Iowa that fed the convection which spawned the tornadoes.
