MDL January, 2001 Monthly Progress Report

METEOROLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT LABORATORY

MONTHLY PROGRESS REPORT

JANUARY 2001

Nowcasting Guidance Development (D. Kitzmiller): David Kitzmiller presented a poster entitled, "Short-Range Forecasts of Rainfall Amount from an Extrapolative-statistical Techniques Utilizing Multiple Remote Sensor Observations," at the Symposium on Precipitation Extremes. Dave has received a lot of interest in this product from both NWS and private-sector meteorologists, who can view the forecasts in real-time at

Hydro-Meteorological Monitoring (Filiaggi): Teletraining sessions on the use of SCAN 2.0 IN AWIPS 5.0 for warning decision making began this month. The sessions are being conducted by the Warning Decision training Branch of OCWWS using the VisitView software package. The SCAN team participated in a dry run session with the WDTB in early January. More information is available at the SCAN training page:

Statistical Update Development (J. Ghirardelli): We finished a major part of the software package that the lab will use to extract and process data from any TDLPAK file and display it with GEMPAK. We finished the UNIX script driver and the modules which will overlay contours of gridded data with point based station data. This will allow us to evaluate our LAMP analysis development by overlaying the LAMP gridded analyses with the surface observations.

Statistical Forecast Development (P. Dallavalle): We've completed selection of sites requested by the Northwest, Colorado Basin, Missouri Basin, and California-Nevada RFC's for AVN- and MRF-based MOS maximum/minimum temperature guidance. We are now checking he observational data required for development and provided by the RFC's.

Efforts to support the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) with new AVN MOS guidance are underway. We are working with AFWA to select the required sites. We plan to begin issuing alphanumeric messages containing available guidance for these sites in April 2001. Following this first stage of support, we will develop guidance for the AFWA sites that currently are not in the MOS system.

Technical Procedures Bulletins entitled "AVN-based MOS Wind Guidance for the United States and Puerto Rico" by B. Sfanos,"AVN-based MOS Precipitation Type Guidance for the United States" by R. L. Allen and M. C. Erickson, and "MRF-based MOS Precipitation Type Guidance for the United States" by R. L. Allen have been written and provided OCWWS for review. An article entitled "An Overview of the National Weather Service's Centralized Statistical Quantitative Precipitation Forecasts" by M. S. Antolik has been published in the December issue of the Journal of Hydrology .

Operations and Software Support (M. Erickson): Work to create BUFR message containing the new AVN and MRF MOS forecasts progressed rapidly this month. In addition to making minor modifications to the design of the BUFR messages, we are changing the encoding software to read the new MOS-2000 file formats. The BUFR messages will be used to disseminate continuous, categorical, and probabilistic MOS forecasts to NWS and private sector customers. The guidance contained in these messages will eventually be available to forecasters for initializing the IFPS digital database.

Storm Surge and Wave Forecasting (W. Shaffer): The National Hurricane Center hosted three sessions of the NWS/FEMA course "Introduction to Hurricanes." The first course, January 8-11, was designed for coastal emergency managers from the Southeastern Atlantic region. From January 22-26, a course was held for and tailored to emergency managers from along the Gulf Coast. The third course, January 29-February 2, trained emergency managers from the Northeast. Instructors included NHC hurricane specialists, FEMA regional hurricane program leaders, and Dr. Will Shaffer from MDL, who covered various aspects of storm surge modeling.

The experimental display of total water levels, based on our extratropical surge model, has been expanded to cover all of our model basins-the East Coast, the Gulf Coast, the Northwest Coast, the Bering Sea coastline, and the Arctic coastline of Alaska. In addition, a graphical station selection has been added, where the user chooses a station directly from one of http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/marine/slosh/etsurge

Forecast Evaluation (W. Shaffer): We provided statistics on max/min temperature, PoP, ceiling, and visibility to OCWWS for October-December 2000. These data are being incorporated into the OCWWS "statistics-on-demand" internet program.

IFP Implementation and Enhancement (R. Meiggs): IFPS Managers, Delta, and Focal Point Training Courses began on January 17 and run through September 28. Release 5.1.1. IFPS was installed at PRC and NHA for SwIT testing.